GIFT  or 

The  Argonaut 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE  AND  THE 
PREPARATION  FOR  LIFE 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/collegecoursepreOOfitcrich 


THE   COLLEGE   COUESE 

AND  THE  PKEPAEATION 

FOE  LIFE* 

EIGHT    TALKS  ON   FAMILL\R 
UNDERGRADUATE  PROBLEMS 

BY  r>^ 

ALBERT   PARKER   FITCH 

President  of  the  Faculty  of 
Andover  Theological  Seminary 


BOSTON   AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

<^])t  jaiteru'ibE  Tj^ttji^  Cambriboe 

1914 


COPYRIGHT,    I914,   BY   ALBERT  PARKER   FITCH 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  IQ14 

30  i/0  /J 


TO 

F.  D.  F. 

WHO   IN   UNWEARYING   AND   GENEROUS  LABORS 

AND   NATIVE  NOBILITY  OF   SPIRIT 

HAS  LIVED  BESIDE  AND  FOR  ME 

A   BEAUTIFUL  AND  EFFICIENT  LIFE 


304013 


APOLOGIA 

No  man  can  fathom  the  heart  of  a  youth.  He 
who  thinks  he  can,  is,  of  all  men,  the  most  incom- 
petent to  deal  with  youth's  problems.  But,  be- 
cause I  believe  in  youth,  I  know  something  of  its 
amazing  and  moving  manifestations.  I  know  its 
capacity  for  idealism  and  the  capacity  for  pain 
that  often  goes  with  it.  I  know  the  passion,  at 
once  the  glory  and  the  peril  of  youth,  which 
leaps  and  surges  in  its  veins,  and  also  the  poign- 
ant moral  suffering  that  accompanies  passion,  as 
truly  in  youth  as  in  middle  age.  I  know  that 
strange  deification  of  sorrow,  made  by  those 
whom  sorrow  has  not  yet  really  touched,  and  the 
heroic  struggle  with  insurmountable  obstacles 
that  youth  will  make  and  love.  I  know  the  intol- 
erance, the  incredible  carelessness,  the  ruthless 
judgments,  the  unconscious  cruelty,  the  trans- 
parent sophistries,  the  sloth  of  body  and  mind, 
the  yielding  to  the  appetites  of  the  flesh,  almost 
at  the  moment  when  rejoicing  in  the  visions  of  the 
spirit,  to  which  youth  is  ever  prone.  But,  deeper 
than  all  this,  I  know  that  at  its  heart  and  in  the 
long  run,  youth  lives  in  high  places  and  its  feet 
are  eager  for  the  mountain-tops.    Modesty  and 

vii 


APOLOGIA 

simplicity  and  sincerity,  a  noble  mixture  of 
reserve  and  frankness,  the  will  to  do  right  and  the 
hatred  of  pretense,  these  lie  at  the  bottom  of 
nearly  every  beginning  life.  Not  infrequently  the 
heart  that  is  most  merry  and  inconsequent  is  also 
most  sensitive  and  shy.  And  here,  I  suppose,  is 
the  only  apologia  for  these  talks  and  the  themes, 
most  ancient  yet  most  fresh,  with  which  they 
deal.  They  are  written  by  one  who  loves  youth 
and  reveres  its  problems,  and  thinks  that  to  be 
young  is  the  divinest  thing  in  the  world  —  by 
one  who  believes  in  the  native  dignity  and  worth 
of  young  human  nature  and  sees,  beneath  the 
amazing  and  bafHing  inconsistencies  of  youth's 
life,  its  essential  decency,  its  unconquerable  ideal- 
ism, its  shining  possibilities.  Whatever  of  value 
or  insight  these  pages  may  possibly  possess  is  due 
to  that  mingling  of  solicitude  and  faith  which 
many  of  us,  whose  feet  have  walked  longer  upon 
this  earth,  feel  for  those  who  have  just  begun  to 
tread  its  surface.  And,  surely,  it  is  only  they  who 
are  themselves  lovers  of  youth  who  can  perceive 
and  understand  its  problems,  for  they  alone  are 
able  to  re-live  them.  Neither  the  preacher  nor 
the  patron  is  tolerable  or  valuable,  for  long- 
continued  contact,  with  beginning  lives.  They 
seek  instinctively,  among  their  elders,  for  the 
comrade,  older,  indeed,  but  still  eager  and  respon- 

viii 


APOLOGIA 

sive,  one  to  whom  the  disciplines  and  disappoint- 
ments of  added  years  have  not  brought  the 
dimming  of  the  imagination,  nor  the  loss  of  the 
power  to  think  one's  self  back  again  into  the  free 
and  joyous  morning  of  human  life.  That  comrade 
I  would  most  ardently  desire  to  be.  And  hence 
these  ensuing  chapters,  which  were  first  spoken 
informally  before  the  undergraduates  of  Wil- 
liams College,  are  not,  I  hope,  essays  of  the  didac- 
tic and  moralizing  sort,  such  as  teachers  and 
preachers  might  impose  upon  their  passive  and 
receptive  hearers.  They  are  just  friendly  talks  of 
one  man  with  some  younger  men.  They  are 
intended  not  so  much  to  edify  and  instruct  as  to 
interpret  and  reveal. 

A.  P.  F. 
Home's  Acre, 
Cornish,  New  Hampshire, 
15th  July,  1914. 


CONTENTS 

I.  Where  all  the  Problems  begin    ...  1 

II.  The  Struggle  for  Personal  Recognition  31 

III.  The  Fight  for  Character G2 

IV.  The  Religious  Instinct  and  the  Christian 
Experience 90 

V.  The  Exceeding  Difficulties  of  Belief      .  118 

VI.  Religion  and  Scholarship    .      .      .      .      .  148 

VII.  Is  Learning  Essential 175 

VIII.  The  Distaste  for  the  Beautiful  .    •  .      .  204 


iV, 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

AND  THE  PREPARATION 

FOR  LIFE 

CHAPTER  I 

WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

They  begin  in  the  Freshman  year;  they  are, 
indeed,  an  inevitable  and  significant  portion  of 
its  very  substance.  For  that  year  is  always  and 
everywhere  a  high  adventure.  It  is  compounded 
of  delightful  if  terrifying  uncertainties.  It  is  the 
exploration,  big  with  fate,  which  each  awakening 
youth  makes  into  the  real  world  of  his  fellow 
human  beings,  into  the  real  convictions,  desires, 
and  powers  of  his  own  soul.  There  still  comes 
once,  to  every  boy,  even  in  our  safe  and  com- 
fortable and  commonplace  world,  a  morning 
when  the  mystery  and  the  thrill  of  the  Unknown 
lay  hold  upon  him;  when  the  call  of  the  undis- 
covered country  is  in  his  ears;  when  he  knows 
that,  at  last,  he  is  free  to  walk  an  untrodden  path 
and  to  do  and  be  what  no  one  else  has  ever  done 
or  been  before.  That  is  the  morning  of  the  day 
when  college  opens,  and  he,  once  a  schoolboy, 
now  an  undergraduate,  stands,  his  own  master, 
at  his  dormitory  door. 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

Consider  a  moment  the  background  out  of 
which  the  Freshman  issues.  Up  to  the  day  when 
he  matriculates,  his  hfe,  if  it  has  been  a  normal 
and  wholesome  one,  has  been  summed  up  in  the 
terms  of  a  mediated  experience.  It  has  been 
made  for  him  by  his  parents,  his  teachers,  or  his 
friends.  Religion,  morals,  knowledge,  social 
standards,  personal  habits  have  been  accepted 
on  authority.  They  have  been  given  and 
received.  The  keynote  of  all  wholesome  boy- 
hood is  obedience.  The  schoolboy  does  not 
really  understand  life,  nor,  for  the  most  part, 
does  he  endeavor  or  desire  to.  He  just  accepts 
it,  taking  for  granted  that  things  are  as  they 
appear.  It  may  well  be  true  that,  even  in  the 
early  boyish  days,  he  has  moments  of  profound 
and  instinctive  expectation,  when  the  slumber- 
ing inner  life  stirs  and  tries  to  find  its  own  out- 
look upon  its  little,  ordered  world.  Amid  the 
security  and  acquiescence  of  later  childhood, 
there  come,  not  infrequently,  to  sensitive  and 
thoughtful  boys  flashes  of  intuitive  discernment 
into  the  grim  world  beyond  childhood  where 
elemental  forces  are  to  grapple  for  possession  of 
the  awakening  soul.  But,  for  the  most  part,  it 
is  only  a  surface  experience  which  the  boy  per- 
ceives, and  life  is  known  to  him  only  in  its 
accepted  and  accredited  expressions. 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

But  when  he  comes  up  to  college,  at  once  a  new 
world  opens.  Four  years  of  unparalleled  oppor- 
tunity and  extraordinary  stimulus  are  set  before 
him.  They  contain  a  maximum  of  privilege  and 
a  minimum  of  responsibility.  Above  all,  they 
offer  to  the  youth  spiritual  and  intellectual  free- 
dom, the  one  thing  which  in  the  final  days  of 
schooling  he  did  most  passionately  desire.  The 
college  deliberately  releases  him  from  the  re- 
straints and  traditions  of  a  provincial  and 
domestic  life.  His  comings  and  goings  are  not 
watched.  Within  certain  limitations  his  courses 
are  not  dictated.  He  is  given  a  large  measure  of 
leisure  and  independence  to  use  that  leisure  as 
he  sees  fit.  Most  significant  of  all,  ideas  and 
convictions  are  no  longer  imposed  upon  him 
from  without.  In  the  critical  and  neutral  at- 
mosphere of  the  college  classroom  everything  is 
questioned,  nothing  is  taken  for  granted;  it  is 
the  facts  and  all  the  facts  and  nothing  but  the 
facts  which  he  pursues.  No  longer,  then,  is  his 
a  selected  and  mediated  experience.  Nothing  is 
received  by  him  now  except  as  he  is  able  to  see  for 
himself  its  inherent  reality  and  worth.  Where 
and  how  he  will,  the  boy  touches  life,  as  it  is, 
with  his  own  right  hand.  If  the  keynote  of 
every  good  school  is  obedience,  then  the  keynote 
of  every  good  college  is  freedom,  freedom  to  in- 

3 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

vestigate  everything  for  one*s  self.  The  boy 
now  is  not  merely  permitted,  he  is  expected,  to 
find  his  own  soul  and  his  own  view  of  life,  fit  is 
this  abrupt  and  radical  tradition  from  school  to 
college,  a  transition  which,  in  our  present  Ameri- 
can system  of  education,  is  as  swift  and  sudden 
and  sharp  as  it  well  could  be,  which  intoxicates 
the  Freshman,  and  imparts  to  the  first  college 
year  both  its  dangers  and  its  splendor. , 

The  first  thing,  then,  to  remember,  is  that 
Romance  begins  with  the  day  of  registration. 
The  absence  from  home,  and  from  any  real 
parental  or  academic  scrutiny;  the  free  and 
intimate  contact  with  many  other  newly  dis- 
covered fellow  human  beings,  all  of  one's  own 
age  and  sex;  the  sense  of  that  opportunity  for 
self-expression  which  accompanies  independence, 
and  of  how  the  future  may  hang  on  the  way  to 
opportunity  is  employed  —  all  these  combine  to 
make  the  Freshman  year  the  first  great  essay  of 
a  young  man's  life.  The  expanding  and  explor- 
ing passion  which,  away  back  in  the  morning  of 
the  world,  drove  Abraham  out  of  the  familiar 
city  of  his  fathers  to  seek  an  unknown  country 
and  to  go  out  not  knowing  whither  he  went;  the 
inner  urge  that  made  Ulysses  sail  the  wine-dark 
seas  even  beyond  the  baths  of  all  the  western 
stars;    the  will  and  lift  and  hope  with  which 

4 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

Columbus  paced  each  night  his  tiny  vessel's  poop 
and  ever  searched  the  dim  horizon  for  he  knew 
not  what  —  something  of  this  age-old,  mascu- 
line spirit  of  romance  and  adventure  every 
normal  undergraduate  consciously  feels.  Of 
course,  he  forgets  the  old.  Of  course,  he  laughs 
at  the  futile  prudence  of  his  elders,  the  shabby 
wisdom  of  an  antique  world.  All  his  second- 
hand experience,  the  accepted  saws,  the  imposed 
views  drop,  like  the  shreds  of  an  old  garment, 
from  his  naked  passion  for  reality.  For  life  is 
fresh,  and  he  is  young,  and  he  is  free,  and  his 
world  is  not  quite  like  anybody  else's,  and  he 
means  to  know  it  for  himself.  And  then,  too, 
running  parallel  with  all  the  glamour  and  ro- 
mance of  the  college  adventure,  a  very  element  of 
its  charm  and  a  part  of  its  fascination  is  the 
sense  of  uncertainty,  of  perplexity,  of  not  being 
quite  sure  of  one's  environment  or  one's  self. 
The  hope  and  confidence  and  joy  are  always 
mingled  with  questionings  and  self-distrust  and 
fear.  So  that  the  four  undergraduate  years 
present  an  extraordinary  mixture  of  initiative 
and  timidity,  courage  and  cowardice,  sublime 
confidence,  profound  and  real  despair  upon  the 
student's  part.  Often  one  mood  succeeds  an- 
other with  such  bewildering  and  irrational 
rapidity  that  some  men's  lives  in  college  seem 

5 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

like  rudderless  ships,  which,  unstable  as  the 
waters  upon  which  they  ride,  are  equally  unable 
to  excel. 

One  best  understands  the  Freshman  nature, 
then,  and  can  most  intelligently  predict  and 
interpret  its  inchoate  and  whimsical  expressions, 
if  one  remembers  into  what  a  vivid  and  trans- 
figured world  it  introduces  the  boy,  a  world  in 
which  every  value  is  re-made,  distorted,  or 
enhanced  as  the  case  may  be,  by  being  bathed  in 
the  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land.  The 
stimulating  of  the  imagination,  the  heightening 
of  self-consciousness,  the  swift  enlargement  of 
the  perceptions  and  ideas  which  academic  life 
brings  to  an  alert  and  sensitive  youth  —  all 
these  combine  to  change  the  very  face  of  nature 
before  his  eyes.  For  the  first  time  the  Universe 
takes  on  significance  and  reality;  he  personalizes 
it,  it  becomes  a  veritable  and  observant  Pres- 
ence; and  sometimes  he  feels  with  it  a  mystic 
touch.  That  eager  and  uplifted  look  which 
dwellers  in  university  towns  so  often  see  in  the 
eyes  of  the  incoming  men,  a  look  made  up 
partly  of  confidence  and  unconscious  pride, 
partly  of  startled  questioning  and  doubt  — 
that  dawning  conqueror's  look  often  seen  on  the 
fresh  and  unworn  faces  of  those  who  themselves 
have  made  no  conquests  yet  —  that  is  the  sign 

6 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

that  they  are  coming  to  themselves,  that  they 
are  finding  Hfe  not  forbidding  and  remote,  but 
warm,  ready,  and  expectant,  and  that  they  are 
gathering  themselves  together  for  the  first  plunge 
beneath  its  depths! 

So,  as  the  background  for  all  our  discussions, 
we  assume  that  the  undergraduate's  life  is,  for 
the  most  part,  cast  into  the  romantic  aspect,  and 
that  it  is  with  intense  absorption  and  idealizing 
passion  that  he  lives  his  four  college  years. 
The  whole  round  world  expresses  itself  for  him 
in  that  particular  assemblage  of  other  young  male 
creatures,  just  like,  yet  unlike  himself,  into 
which  he  has  been  cast.  Into  the  vortex  of  their 
eager,  springing  lives  he  expects  to  be  drawn. 
There  reside  for  him  the  supreme  values.  In 
that  world  he  means  to  find  all  the  poetry  and  the 
friendship  which  the  gray-haired  graduates,  as 
they  sit  about  the  fire,  recount;  all  the  vision 
and  aspiration  which  college  hymns  and  college 
songs  suggest.  How  vital  is  his  first  plunge  into 
this  communal,  undirected  life!  How  instantly 
the  inner  man  awakens  to  it!  (jThen  his  soul, 
that  which  is,  he,  himself,  begins  to  ask.  Who  am 
I,  and  for  what  came  I  into  the  world?  And 
while  it  thus  questions,  it  hears  the  world  calling, 
inviting  it  to  furthest  discovery  and  to  utmost 
conquest,   saying.   Come  out  to  me,   O  youth  !n 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

You  and  your  comrades  come  together,  and  as, 
in  me,  you  see  and  feel  and  do,  so  shall  you  know ! 
Thus  there  re-begins,  each  autumn,  in  every 
college  town,  that  search,  the  most  necessary 
yet  dangerous  search  the  world  has  knowledge 
of  —  the  quest  of  half -awakened  youth  for  its 
own  realities.  This  is  what  makes  the  untell- 
able  romance,  the  apparent  recklessness,  the 
poignant,  perilous  delights  of  undergraduate 
days. 

It  is,  then,  out  of  this  situation  which  we  have 
thus  been  trying  to  describe  that  all  the  char- 
acteristic problems  of  youth  arise.  And  the  first 
problem  is  the  social  one.  For  in  college,  being 
free,  the  boy  has  his  initial  opportunity  to  find 
out  whether  he  can  make  a  man  of  himself.  And 
the  first  test  of  manhood  is  always  in  connection 
with  one's  contemporaries.  What  standing  can 
he  win  with  them.^^  The  first  adventure  is  the 
search  for  the  approbation  of  one's  peers;  the 
first  problem  is  the  problem  of  personal  recogni- 
tion. What  veritable,  if  temporary,  tragedies 
that  phrase  may  cover!  How  many  shy  and 
conscious  lads  have  lived  their  college  years  in 
acutest  misery,  feeling  that,  because  they  had 
not  attained  the  coveted  undergraduate  standing, 
they  were  self-confessed  failures,  already  con- 
signed to  mediocrity.     The  primary  instinct  of 

8 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

the  awakening  life,  born  of  its  mixture  of  con- 
fidence and  hesitancy,  is  the  craving  for  the 
support  and  recognition  of  its  comrades.  Their 
sanction  is  the  first  thing  the  average  under- 
graduate desires,  and,  without  it,  no  other 
sanction  is  suflScient.  For  of  course  his  parents 
believe  in  him,  —  in  a  sense  they  must,  —  and 
he  feels  they  do  not  see  him  as  he  is,  affection 
has  made  them  blind.  Of  course  the  college 
authorities  accept  him.  But  theirs  is  the  general 
and  official  approval,  which,  at  the  beginning, 
they  give  to  all.  His  real  judges,  therefore,  must 
be  his  peers.  There  is  some  justice  in  this 
feeling,  so  intense  in  youth,  that  the  preliminary 
condition  of  larger  and  more  substantial  achieve- 
ments is  the  winning  of  the  confidence  and 
admiration  of  the  men  of  one's  own  genera- 
tion. 

Yet  how  handicapped  is  many  a  youth  as  he 
approaches  his  social  problem!  For  he  is  an 
American,  his  life,  most  probably,  issuing  from  a 
thin  background.  He  comes  up  to  college  often 
acutely  conscious  of  a  crudity  and  ignorance 
which  are  neither  supported  nor  concealed  by 
those  inherited  traditions  and  usages  which,  in 
an  older  society,  give  assurance  to  youth  and 
help  it  to  make  its  start.  Hence  how  few  under- 
graduates, especially  when  under-classmen,  really 

9 


/ 

/ 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

dare  to  be  themselves.  How  often,  at  alumni 
reunions,  one  hears  the  remark:  "Why,  what  a 
fine  fellow  Smith  is !  I  don't  seem  to  have  known 
him  in  college.  How  much  he  has  developed 
since."  Of  course,  Smith  was  n't  known  in 
college.  He  did  n't  know  himself  in  those 
undergraduate  days;  he  did  n't  dare  to.  The 
under-classman,  such  is  the  irony  of  his  situation, 
tends  to  use  his  new-found  freedom  to  become,  of 
all  men  in  the  world,  the  expert  imitator,  the 
very  slave  of  the  public  opinion  of  his  peers. 
Independence  of  judgment,  of  action,  even  of 
dress  is  foreign  to  him.  But  before  railing  at 
him  for  this  negative  plasticity,  we  must  remem- 
ber how  naturally  it  grows  out  of  the  circum- 
stances of  his  position.  We  older  men  can 
remember  the  envy  with  which  we  looked  upon 
the  debonair  and  sophisticated  youth  of  our  class, 
gay,  polished,  and  adaptable,  and  how  dumb  we 
were  in  his  presence.  We  could  not  possibly 
have  taken  toward  him,  in  those  days,  the  atti- 
tude commended  in  the  terse  advice  I  once  heard 
the  president  of  a  great  university  give  to  his 
incoming  Freshmen:  "Avoid  the  so-called  mag- 
netic men  in  your  class,"  he  said,  "I  have  ob- 
served that  they  seldom  amount  to  anything." 
No!  To  us  such  men  appeared  to  be  the  very 
darlings  of  the  gods.     So  there  are  many  trage- 

10 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

dies  in  college,  growing  out  of  the  social  situa- 
tion and  a  part  of  the  finding  experience  of  youth, 
which  are  real  enough  at  the  time,  although  they 
are  pathetically  overestimated  by  the  victim. 
And,  before  we  come  to  discuss  this  whole  matter 
at  length,  let  me  say  just  this  word,  in  advance, 
to  any  boy  who  may  read  these  lines.  I  believe 
that  situation  should  be  studied  in  all  seriousness 
and  sympathy,  with  as  clear  an  apprehension  of 
its  present  importance  as  of  its  relative  insignifi- 
cance. 

Again,  how  intimately  connected  with  these 
swift  and  radical  transitions  are  the  moral  issues, 
the  fights  and  despairs  of  gallant  youth  who 
strive  to  keep  the  body  under.  How  utterly 
impossible  it  is  to  judge  these  struggles  fairly  or 
to  approach  them  wisely,  unless  they  are  seen 
against  the  background  of  the  tumultuous, 
expanding,  and  discovering  period  of  life  in  which 
they  take  their  rise.  It  is  not  merely  that  the 
recognition  of  selfhood  precipitates  these  strug- 
gles; they  are  an  essential  part  of  that  recogni- 
tion itself.  Here  is  this  overwhelming  impact  of 
life  that  beats  in  upon  a  sensitive,  startled, 
suddenly  self-conscious  boy.  Its  stimulus  is 
beyond  all  computation.  The  unsated  emotions, 
the  unspent  energies,  are  aroused  to  their  utmost 
capacities  by  it.     The  restlessness  of  unexpressed 

11 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

and  unintelligible  powers  continually  besets  him. 
Sometimes  these  primitive  instincts  tempt  him 
to  deeds  whose  entire  significance  he  cannot 
know.  Sometimes  they  fasten  upon  him  ab- 
normal or  indulgent  habits  of  body  or  mind  when 
he  is  scarcely  aware  of  what  a  habit  is.  Who, 
then,  seeing  a  youth's  mistakes,  even  his  darker 
and  more  inexcusable  ones,  in  the  light  of  his  age 
and  his  environment,  can  wholly  condemn  them? 
Who  would  marvel  at  the  brutal,  heroic,  ludi- 
crous, pathetic,  irrational,  exasperating  things 
that  a  hard-pressed  youth  will  do.  With  what 
prodigality,  sometimes,  will  he  dull  the  keenest 
edge  of  unused  sense!  How  he  will  hasten  to 
bruise  his  feet  in  the  ways  of  dark  desire!  He 
can  do  the  most  dreadful  things  at  times,  and 
for  a  time,  appears  to  be  unscathed  by  them. 
But  we,  watching  each  moral  struggle,  and 
clearly  perceiving  its  antecedents,  can  scarcely 
condemn  or  despise  him.  Indeed,  it  may  be 
questioned  whether  any  man,  until  he  has  ceased 
to  be  shocked,  and  ceased  to  be  scornful,  over  any 
expression  of  the  life  of  his  fellow  human  beings, 
has  much  reason  to  suppose  that  he  can  interpret 
them  justly  or  influence  them  sincerely.  At  all 
events,  to  merely  preach,  here,  would  be  entirely 
futile,  and  to  condemn,  quite  despicable.  For 
when  we  consider  the  reserves  of  unexhausted 

12 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

emotion,  the  capacity  for  vivid  imagination,  the 
imperious  instincts  of  abounding  youth;  and, 
when  we  remember  that,  here,  ignorance  of  self 
and  Hfe  and  liberty  of  choice  for  a  time  go  hand 
in  hand,  then  we  must  surely  acknowledge  that 
multitudes  of  young  men  never  quite  understand 
their  errors,  and  need,  not  so  much  the  preacher 
or  the  mentor  as  the  friend.  One  should  never 
forget,  in  dealing  with  the  moral  problems  of 
the  undergraduate,  that  they  are  the  problems  of 
one  who  still  moves  about  in  worlds  not  realized. 
(The  one  thing,  therefore,  which  he  has  a  right  to 
expect  of  us,  when  we  approach  him  in  this  field  of 
his  experience,  is  sympathy,  faith,  and  comrade- 
ship, and  not  so  much  the  imposing  of  sententious 
wisdom  as  the  imparting  of  moral  power.  Nor 
should  one  ever  forget,  either,  that  the  very 
conditions  of  academic  life,  which  conditions  w^e 
older  men  determine  and  perpetuate,  and  to 
which  we  invite  and  introduce  the  youth,  are  not 
entirely  favorable  to  the  best  self -development. 
For  all  the  indubitable  ethical  idealism  of  every 
college  community,  it  nevertheless  remains  true 
that  there  is  a  terribly  inhuman  side  to  scholastic 
life.  Many  brilliant  scholars  and  teachers  ap- 
pear to  youth  to  be  compounds  of  fire  and  ice, 
glowing  minds,  but  frigid  souls!  There  is  a  sort 
of  pagan  and  unmoral  sense  which  sometimes 

13 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

accompanies,  and  appears  to  be  fostered  by, 
large  intellectual  powers  and  achievements.  The 
brutal  selfishness  of  the  pupil  is,  not  infrequently, 
quite  equaled  by  the  frank  indifference  and  self- 
absorption  of  his  instructor.  Who  that  lives 
in  academic  communities  is  not  often  moved  to 
amazement  at  the  sublime  disregard  which,  with 
no  offer  of  friendly  hospitality  and  no  provision 
of  more  decent  social  opportunity,  permits 
youth,  night  after  night,  to  frequent  the  cheap 
musical  shows,  with  their  open  incitement  to 
vulgarity  and  lust.  It  is  true  that  a  boy  must 
fight  his  own  battles  and  that  only  a  sentiment- 
alist would  desire  to  fight  them  for  him.  It  is 
true  that  no  one  can  carry  boys  through  adoles- 
cence to  manhood  in  perambulators  and  that  no 
decent  boy  would  endure  the  experiment.  But 
it  is  also  true  that  when  older  men,  who  have 
come  through  the  struggle  and  won  their  place, 
proceed  to  ignore  the  ever-continuing  battle,  and 
to  declare  its  present  issues  no  concern  of  theirs, 
they  thereby  show  themselves  something  less 
than  normal  human  beings.  Youth  is  quick  to 
perceive  that  such  an  irresponsible  attitude 
toward  the  moral  issues  of  life  argues  a  certain 
human  skepticism  in  him  who  holds  it.  They 
often,  if  unjustly,  attribute  it  to  failure  in  the 
past  and  cynical  indifference  as  to  the  future. 

14 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

It  is,  then,  demanded  of  us  also,  by  our  very 
humanity,  that  we  Hve  close  to  these  ethical 
struggles  of  our  younger  brothers  of  the  race. 
For  in  this  moral  world  of  youth,  with  what 
immeasureable  human  values,  with  what  capacity 
for  effort  and  suffering,  do  we  deal!  Does  it  not 
make  one's  very  heart  stand  still  to  reflect  that 
within  reach  of  us  and  all  about  us,  in  each  day  of 
the  long  college  year,  there  must  be  young  men 
who  are  putting  forth  their  desperate,  somber, 
half-mechanical  efforts  to  hold  these  mounting, 
leaping  passions  until  the  darkness  and  the 
helplessness  shall  lessen,  and  something  or  some 
one  shall  give  them  peace.  Truly,  George  Eliot 
was  right,  and  expresses  the  natural  attitude 
honest  men  take  toward  the  ethical  problems 
of  their  younger  brothers,  when  she  said:  "Surely, 
surely,  the  only  true  knowledge  of  our  fellow 
men  is  that  which  enables  us  to  feel  with  them. 
Our  subtlest  analysis  must  miss  the  essential 
truth  unless  it  be  lit  up  by  that  love  which  sees 
in  all  forms  of  human  thought  and  work  the  life 
and  death  struggles  of  separate  human  beings." 

And  so,  too,  the  religious  problem  of  the  under- 
graduate is  only  clearly  or  sanely  seen  when  con- 
ceived of  as  largely  the  product  of  his  passion  to 
be  free  and  his  bewilderment  in  the  new  world  of 
realities  to  which  freedom  introduces  him.    There 

15 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

are  three  quite  distinct  types  of  conventionally 
religious  youth  who  come  up  to  college.  There  is, 
first,  the  boy  who  identifies  religion  with  subscrip- 
tion to  creed,  allegiance  to  formulae  handed  down 
by  an  elder  generation.  There  are  certain  classic 
statements  of  the  Christian  faith.  They  are  ma- 
jestic with  the  prestige  of  their  antiquity.  By 
them  the  fathers  and  the  fathers'  fathers  have,  for 
the  most  part,  lived  and  died.  The  boy  does  not 
relate  these  creeds  to  the  remainder  of  his  field 
of  thought.  He  does  not  understand  them. 
He  has  no  world- view  into  which  they  fit.  He 
just  accepts  them,  often  with  a  superior  and 
complacent  manner  which  is  as  ludicrous  as  it  is 
exasperating  to  his  elders.  He  is  a  Churchman, 
a  Liberal,  a  Conservative;  and  that  largely  sums 
up  his  religion. 

Then  there  is  the  boy  who  identifies  his  faith 
with  pious  practices.  He  has  been  taught  to 
read  the  Scriptures,  to  make  his  devotions,  to 
keep  the  Sabbath,  to  attend  church.  He  has 
been  told  there  are  certain  things  he  must  not 
do,  and  certain  other  things  he  may  do.  He 
conceives  of  wrong  and  right  as  mutually  ex- 
clusive territories,  localities  separated  by  sharp 
boundary  lines.  Faith  and  righteousness,  to 
him,  are  easily  achieved  by  remaining  in  the 
right  territory.     So   he  becomes   the   youthful 

16 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

conformist,  and  though  most  often  of  sterling 
stuff,  sometimes  appears  a  most  outrageous  prig. 
And,  finally,  there  is  a  third,  brand-new  type 
of  youthful  godliness,  and  a  most  amazing  one 
it  is  to  the  returning  graduates  of  two  decades 
ago!  The  ardent  if  superficial  humanism  of  our 
time  has  produced  the  youth  who  identifies 
religion  with  ethical  idealism,  social  service,  and 
administrative  efficiency.  He  is  both  pious  and 
popular,  altruistic  and  athletic;  he  has  wedded 
and  made  one  the  secular  and  the  spiritual! 
He  is  a  past-master  at  planning  a  missionary 
campaign,  organizing  a  "student  conference,"  or 
making  up  an  attractive  programme.  He  will 
be  found  teaching  in  the  settlement  house,  or 
acting  as  scout-master  for  East  Side  gamins,  or 
installed  as  the  college  Christian  Association's 
secretary.  Personally,  he  is  wholly  delightful; 
a  most  friendly  and  approachable  chap;  in  all 
ways  of  practical  usefulness  and  helpfulness 
amazingly  able  and  resourceful.  But  his  chief 
interest,  like  that  of  many  of  his  peers,  is  in 
executive  tasks,  "doing  things";  in  trying  out 
his  new  social  and  economic  theories;  and  in 
being  a  sort  of  deus  ex  machina  for  his  various 
proteges.  He  has  character  but  knows  little  of 
religious  passion,  has  no  clear  spiritual  insight,  nor 
is  he  always  too  well  acquainted  with  his  soul. 

17 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

These,  then,  are  the  sorts  of  boys,  In  the  rehg- 
ious  realm,  whom  the  forces  of  freedom  and  reah- 
ty  are  to  mould  in  the  plastic  college  years.     Of 
course,  therefore,  all  three  types,  if  they  grow 
and  amount  to  anything  in  college,  have  their 
spiritual  problems,  and  it  is  almost  to  be  ex- 
pected that  a  first-rate  Sophomore  will  be  fiercely 
contemptuous    of    the    faith!     For    when    the 
awakening   mind    perceives    that    most    of    the 
inherited  formulations  of  religion  are  antique  in 
language  and  obsolete  in  their  world-view,  then, 
wherever   experience   has   been   identified   with 
creed  and  faith  with  its  expressions,  the  youth 
begins  to  be  in  trouble.     If  he  loses  the  inherited 
philosophy  of  his  religion,  as  he  is  almost  sure 
to,  he  appears  to  have  lost  his  spiritual  experi- 
ence with  it.     Again,   one   of   the  first   things 
that  an  observant  youth  discovers  is  that  the 
better  men  are,  the  more  widely  they  are  apt 
to   differ   in   acceptance   or   rejection   of   pious 
practices;    and  that  such  practices  themselves 
change  and  disappear  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion; and  that  saying  "Lord,  Lord,"  and  keeping 
the  Sabbath  holy,  and  paying  every  tithe,  is  n't 
necessarily  religion,  and,  often,  does  not  proceed 
from  religious  motives.     Sometimes,  as  the  youth 
perceives,  the  men  who  indulge  in  these  things 
are  far  from  doing  justly  and  loving  mercy  and 

18 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

walking  humbly  with  their  God.  It  is,  there- 
fore, inevitable  that  the  life  which  has  confused 
religion  with  respectability  and  confounded 
character  with  conformity,  when  it  experiences 
its  first  disillusionment  should  naturally  repudi- 
ate all  traditional  forms  of  piety  and  every 
venerable  religious  practice,  and  even  conceive 
of  all  the  organized  expressions  of  Christianity 
as  largely  hypocrisies.  Nor  is  it  hard  to  deal 
with  this  situation  when  one  sees  it  as  merely 
incident  to  the  whole  difficult  but  precious  transi- 
tion which  the  youth  is  going  through  in  every 
department  of  his  life.  That  process,  here, 
should  carry  him  out  of  an  unvital  faith  which 
he  has  merely  inherited  into  the  power  of  the 
spiritual  experience  which  he  may  personally 
acquire. 

But,  perhaps,  the  problem  is  not  so  simple 
when  we  come  to  deal  with  our  third  type,  the 
lad  who  confuses  spiritual  forces  with  their 
beneficient  social  expressions  and  identifies  per- 
sonal religion  with  clean  and  amiable  living. 
This  new  figure  in  the  college  world  is  hailed  as 
the  very  champion  of  godliness  upon  the  campus. 
He  is  the  defender  of  the  faith,  drawn  from  the 
ranks  of  the  iTidifferent>  the  impressive  witness 
to  the  true  revival  of  religion  in  our  day.  He  is, 
in  short,  one  of  the  overestimated,  overempha- 

19 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

sized  figures  in  the  undergraduate  world  of  the 
moment.  It  is  one  of  the  serious,  and  not 
altogether  easy,  tasks  of  the  college  teacher  and 
preacher  to  arouse  this  life  to  realities,  to  make 
it  acquainted  with  the  exceeding  difficulties  of 
belief,  to  vex  it  with  the  problems  of  the  origin 
and  destiny  of  the  human  spirit,  to  reveal  to 
its  own  helplessness,  ignorance,  and  sin.  This 
is  the  life  that  is  in  most  danger  of  passing 
through  the  college  years  without  being  stirred 
to  its  depths.  Certainly  here  the  revelation  of 
selfhood,  and  the  awakening  of  personality,  must 
mean  the  shaking  of  many  amiable  assurances, 
and  the  shattering  of  an  unconscious  complacency 
and  a  too-easy  strength.  Certainly  here  it  is 
most  needed,  if  the  best  in  the  life  is  ever  to 
fulfil  itself,  that  the  revelation  of  self  should 
lead  to  a  veritable  and  subduing  contact  with 
that  Spirit  from  whom  all  selfhood  issues. 

But  as  we  thus  approach  the  inner  life  of  the 
college,  how  unworthy  appear  the  current  mis- 
apprehensions of  undergraduate  religion.  One 
now  perceives  that  it  is  not  true  that  the  college 
is  a  godless  place  where  men  are  encouraged  to 
lose  their  faith.  On  the  contrary,  the  college  is 
fundamentally  religious  because  it  insists  on  the 
substance  rather  than  the  expression  of  spiritual 
living,  and  one  of  its  most  precious  offices  is  to 

20 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

force  young  men  to  distinguish  between  the  two. 
The  influence  of  the  American  college,  far  from 
being  unspiritual  or  unethical,  is  just  the  con- 
trary. There  are  few  other  places  in  the  com- 
munity where  the  conditions  for  getting  at  a 
real  religion  are  more  favorable,  or  where,  on  the 
whole,  it  is  so  easy  to  do  right  and  so  hard  to  do 
wrong.  And,  again,  it  obviously  is  not  true 
that  men,  in  the  college  period  of  life,  are  natur- 
ally unbelievers,  although  often  they  themselves 
believe  this  to  be  true.  It  is  really  the  passion 
for  sincerity,  the  grim  determination  to  get  at 
reality,  the  sense  of  the  surpassing  importance 
of  the  spirit,  which  it  is  now  perceived  must  lie 
behind  the  form,  which  induces  the  flippant  or 
the  brutal  repudiations  by  youth  of  outworn 
rites  and  discredited  conceptions.  There  is  a 
capacity  for  moral  indignation  in  the  youthful 
protestant,  a  genuine  social  passion,  which  might 
well  put  his  elders  to  the  blush.  Only  when  we 
see  the  religious  situation  in  college,  in  the  light 
of  its  origins,  do  we  realize  how  noble  is  much 
of  the  apparently  irreligious  expression.  Only 
then  do  we  realize  how  far  from  being  insoluble 
are  the  difficulties  which,  for  thinking  but  in- 
experienced youth,  must  surround  the  religious 
hypothesis.  Most  of  the  spiritual  struggles  of 
under-graduates,  therefore,  should  be  dealt  with 

21 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

as  evidences  of  ethical  sincerity,  intellectual  in- 
tegrity, and  religious  capacity. 

And  if  anything  further  were  needed  to  prove 
the  depth  and  reality  of  the  spiritual  influence  of 
the  college,  it  would  be  found  in  that  mystical 
experience  of  God  which  comes,  ever  to  the 
shaming  and  subduing  of  their  elders,  to  many 
boys  in  their  undergraduate  days.  For  it  some- 
times happens,  to  pure-hearted  and  high-minded 
youth,  that  the  awakening  of  the  soul  is  not  to 
temporary  disillusionment  nor  to  racking  doubts, 
but  to  its  own  self -certified  vision  of  the  Eternal. 
There  are  always,  let  us  humbly  and  gratefully 
acknowledge,  in  every  college  class  youth  who 
walk  softly  through  their  free  and  joyous  days, 
because  they  are  conscious  that  God  is  near. 
There  has  been  revealed  to  them,  from  within, 
what  lies  behind  creed  and  rite,  personal  piety 
and  unselfish  endeavor.  They  have  had  those 
days,  of  which  Stopford  Brooke  speaks  some- 
where, the  precious,  prophetic  days  of  youth, 
when,  suddenly,  without  visible  cause  or  reason, 
the  life  is  lifted  high  above  the  Babel  of  existence 
and  sees  as  from  some  watch-tower  of  the  soul; 
days  when  youth  sincerely  wearies  of  the  world, 
and  work  seems  futile,  and  pleasure  infinitely 
vain;  days  when  life  passes  before  them  like  the 
swift  and  insubstantial  pageant  of  a  dream,  and 

22 


WHERE^AjyL  THE^  ra^  BEGIN 

human  intercourse  is  far  removed,  and  new 
voices  are  heard  in  the  soul,  and  the  eternal 
Father  calls  to  his  awakened  child. 

But  when  we  come  to  the  intellectual  problem, 
to  the  apparently  hopeless  task  of  making  young 
scholars  out  of  American  schoolboys,  we  might 
appear  to  be  upon  more  debatable  ground.  Yet 
I  think  the  conspicuous  lack  of  interest  in  in- 
tellectual matters,  the  failure  to  appreciate  the 
value  of  pure  learning,  or  to  understand  the  ends 
to  which  it  may  be  applied,  which  is  so  tragi- 
cally or  so  ludicrously  apparent,  according  as  you 
happen  to  view  it,  in  the  American  college,  is 
also  chiefly  to  be  traced  to  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  the  undergraduate's  lot.  Three  factors, 
directly  and  powerfully  influencing  him,  have 
contributed  to  the  anomalous  place  of  learning 
among  us. 

First,  the  boy  usually  comes  from  a  home  of 
slight  intellectual  traditions.  He  heard  politics 
and  business  and  church  and  neighborhood  gossip 
and  the  family's  material  progress  discussed 
there,  but  almost  never  art  or  learning.  The 
value  of  ideas,  the  passion  for  knowledge,  the 
reverence  for  truth  in  the  abstract,  did  not  enter 
into  that  circle.  When,  as  a  schoolboy,  he  with- 
drew "after  supper"  to  his  Latin  and  mathe- 
matics,   he    also    withdrew    from    the    area    of 

23 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

sympathetic  understanding  or  interest  on  the 
part  of  his  elders.  There  was  Httle  encourage- 
ment given  to  him  at  home  to  consider  scholar- 
ship as  an  essential  or  practical  part  of  the  life 
of  a  human  being.  It  is  only  fair  to  remember, 
when  dealing  with  a  lazy  Freshman,  that  prob- 
ably it  was  for  social  and  economic  reasons  that 
his  father  sent  him  to  college.  He  arrives  on  the 
campus  with  very  little  in  the  way  of  an  intellec- 
tual inheritance. 

Again,  it  may  well  be  questioned  whether  the 
abrupt  transition  from  the  fixed  curriculum  of 
the  secondary  school  to  the  once  almost  wide- 
open  elective  system  (happily  no  longer  so)  of 
the  American  college  has  not  victimized  the 
average  boy.  Ought  we  to  expect  him  to  change 
at  once,  with  enthusiasm  and  fidelity,  from  the 
textbook  and  the  recitation  in  the  prescribed 
subject  to  the  lecture  and  the  private  reading  in 
the  elective  —  especially  w^hen  the  cramming 
process,  by  which  he  was  more  or  less  filled  up 
for  his  entrance  examinations,  could  hardly  in- 
crease his  sense  of  the  seriousness  and  worth  of 
things  intellectual!  He  comes  up,  then,  with  the 
universal  and  immeasurable  laziness  of  the 
normal  young  male,  to  the  freedom  of  his  Fresh- 
man year.  He  has  very  little  background  for 
an  academic  life,  no  just  or  idealized  conception 

24 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

of  it.  He  is  filled  with  the  natural  confusion  of 
an  immature  and  rapidly  developing  mind,  which 
is  suddenly  transferred  from  one  system  of  edu- 
cation to  another.  This  confusion  is  enhanced 
by  the  multitude  of  distractions,  quite  unrelated 
to  the  main  business  of  college,  with  which  we 
permit  his  days  to  be  filled. 

And  then,  finally,  as  the  third  factor  in  his 
situation,  we  must  remember  that  he  finds  within 
the  academic  world  itself  no  generally  accepted 
ideal  of  learning.  The  German  university  stands 
for  thorough  and  exact  knowledge  gained  in  one 
department  of  scholarship  at  almost  any  human 
or  aesthetic  cost.  The  English  university  is 
wedded  to  the  ideal  of  a  general  culture,  that 
sort  of  scholarship  which  issues  in  the  cosmopoli- 
tan and  the  gentleman.  But  the  American  col- 
lege has  no  such  widely  recognized  common 
standard.  One  great  university  encourages  a 
highly  developed  individualism,  directed  to  social 
and  humane  leadership.  Another  idealizes  cor- 
porate values,  producing  among  its  students  a 
magnificent  es'prit  de  cor;p5,  in  which  the  individual 
loses  himself  for  the  sake  of  the  common  splendor 
of  the  whole.  Some  institutions  foster  the  kind 
of  learning  whose  commercial  values  can  be 
readily  perceived,  the  sorts  of  courses  whose 
immediate  utility  is  discernible,  the  scholarship 

25 


THE   COLLEGE  COURSE 

which  may  be  cashed.  If,  then,  we  view  the 
intellectual  problem  of  the  undergraduate  as  we 
have  viewed  the  others,  in  the  light  of  his  in- 
heritance and  environment,  we  must  expect  that 
he  could  not  issue  from  his  preparatory  school  a 
full-fledged  scholar,  like  an  Athene  from  the 
brain  of  Zeus.  Perhaps  the  gravest  task  that 
now  confronts  the  American  college  is  that  of 
making  ajp^ntelligent  and  reflective  being  out  of 
the  average  collegian.  But  we  must  work  at 
this  on  the  recognized  basis  of  his  natural  mis- 
conceptions and  his  inevitable  ignorance.  Per- 
haps he  would  not  dislike  scholarship  if  he  only 
understood  what  it  really  was  and  how  it  might 
be  used.  It  is  regrettable,  but  not  at  all  in- 
explicable, that  the  Freshman  should  identify  the 
scholar  with  the  scholastic,  and  erudition  with 
pedantry.  We  are  ourselves  partly  to  blame 
when  he  sometimes  conceives  of  the  college  as 
being  chiefly  aJ^mtez.  watering-place,  designed 
for  youth,  and  just  touched  by  an  academic  flavor. 
While  here,  as  elsewhere,  the  remedy  must  be 
drastic  and  the  standards  exacting,  we  shall  not 
be  just,  and  hence  we  shall  not  be  effective, 
unless  we  remember  that  the  youth  has  been  more 
sinned  against  than  sinning,  and  that  he  has 
never  yet  had  a  fair  chance  to  discover  the 
delights  of  intellectual  discipline.     If  we,  then, 

26 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

approach  him  in  a  sympathetic  spirit,  meaning  to 
lead  rather  than  to  drive,  we  may  find  an  intel- 
lectual response  far  beyond  what,  in  the  begin- 
ning, appeared  to  be  possible  or  likely. 

And  this  is  equally  true  of  the  aesthetic  prob- 
lem. When  we  speak  of  our  young  barbarians 
at  play,  as  Arnold  spoke  of  even  the  sophisticated 
and  urbane  Oxonians,  do  we  not  explain  the  noun 
by  the  adjective?  Of  course,  they  are  more  or 
less  barbarians  if  they  are  young.  A  fastidious 
sense,  a  discriminating  taste,  a  high  and  critical 
appreciation  of  beauty,  and  an  acute  distaste  for 
ugliness,  can  only  be  acquired,  unless  a  boy  be 
born  a  Michael  Angelo  or  a  Keats,  through  long 
and  varied  processes.  Moreover,  it  is  once  more 
true,  here,  that  the  college  environment  is  not 
altogether  favorable.  S^olars,  like  other  people, 
have  their  severe  linmations,  and  their  some- 
times intense  provincialisms.  Not  infrequently 
their  provincialism  takes  the  particular  form  of 
an  almost  cultivated  indifference  to  beauty,  a 
depreciation  of  the  aesthetic.  The  more  modern 
departments  of  the  college,  which  deal  with  the 
arts  of  music  and  architecture,  have  had  to  win 
their  way,  not  without  opposition,  and  fight  for 
a  just  place  in  the  curriculum.  It  is  still  not  un- 
common to  suspect  of  superficiality  the  youth 
who  elects  the  fine  arts,  and  to  lay  upon  his 

27 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

instructor  the  burden  of  proof  as  to  his  own 
scholarship  and  soKd  achievement.  Certainly 
our  boys  are  sufficiently  barbarian,  but  are  we, 
most  of  whose  college  buildings  are  worse  than 
"factories  of  the  Muses,"  altogether  competent 
to  improve  them? 

I  believe  it  to  be  the  bounden  duty  of  the 
college,  and  the  one  most  often  neglected,  to  set 
up  for  youth  aesthetic  standards;  to  teach  them 
the  eternal  fitness  of  some  things,  and  the  hideous 
unfitness  of  others ;  to  make  them  see  the  aspect 
of  goodness  v/hich  is  beauty,  and  the  aspect  of 
beauty  which  is  truth.  But  this,  I  think,  we 
shall  best  do  as  we  approach  the  whole  problem, 
with  the  expectation  that  the  average  American 
of  one  and  twenty  is,  by  the  very  circumstances 
of  his  lot,  uninterested  in,  and  incapable  of  appre- 
ciating, most  of  the  myriad  forms  of  beauty 
which  lie  before  his  very  eyes.  The  aesthetic 
sanctions  of  virtue,  the  happy  alliance  between 
goodness  and  art,  have  never  been  greatly  appre- 
ciated or  believed  in  in  our  communities.  I 
suppose  we  may  thank  the  Puritan  for  that. 
Perhaps  this  is  the  reason  why  so  many  of  the 
godly  among  us  are  inhuman,  and  so  many  of 
the  human  are  ungodly!  If  there  is  a  moral 
duty  to  be  intelligent  which  rests  upon  the 
would-be  developed  life,  then  I  think  there  is 


WHERE  ALL  THE  PROBLEMS  BEGIN 

equally  the  duty  that  the  intelligent  should  be 
nobly  critical  and  fastidious.  I  am  inclined  to 
believe  that,  when  the  aesthetic  side  of  a  youth's 
life  is  approached  as  being  of  as  much  importance 
to  his  manhood  as  his  moral  and  intellectual 
development,  then  we  shall  do  something  with  it. 
I  hope,  therefore,  that  there  may  have  been 
shown  in  these  pages,  how  seriously  one  may  take 
the  problems  of  youth,  and  yet,  in  a  sense,  how 
lightly  one  may  take  them,  too.  They  are  real 
and  critical  and  painful.  But  they  do  not  pro- 
ceed either  from  grave  moral  delinquency,  or 
inescapable  intellectual  difficulties,  or  native 
incapacity,  or  spiritual  dullness.  I  believe  just 
the  contrary  to  be  true,  ^ne  boy  who  appears 
to  be  a  snob,  and  the  boy  who  appears  to  be  a 
stiff  or  a  grind;  the  boy  who  appears  to  be  ir- 
religious and  profane;  the  boy  who  is  incorri- 
gibly lazy  and  will  not  work;  the  boy  who 
outrages  every  canon  of  good  taste  in  his  raiment, 
his  vocabulary,  and  his  pleasures  —  all  these  are 
not  what  they  seer^  Most  of  them  are  good 
men  in  the  making,  each,  in  accordance  with  the 
law  of  his  own  nature,  passing  through  the 
inevitable  stages  of  that  fascinating  if  exasperat- 
ing process.  Every  word,  therefore,  of  the 
ensuing  chapters  comes  from  one  who  tries  to 
hit  hard,  because  young  men  are  so  worth  the 

29 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

hitting  hard;  but  from  one  who  always  dis- 
tinguishes, in  his  own  mind,  between  the  sin,  the 
dullness,  the  mistake,  and  the  infinitely  larger 
and  better  life  which  is  struggling  to  express  itself 
in  these  devious  and  blundering  ways.  Most  of 
all  I  should  like  to  make  it  clear  that  nothing  is 
further  from  the  truth  than  that  the  normal, 
older  life  has  scant  faith  and  interest  in  the 
younger  ones  around  it.  On  the  contrary,  most 
men,  who  are  of  a  decent  sort,  have  more  faith 
in  such  youth  than  they  ever  had  in  their  own. 
They  look  wistfully  to  it  to  succeed  where  they 
have  failed.  They  are  convinced  that  there  can 
be  nothing  in  these  younger  lives  which  can  be 
hopeless  now.  For  nearly  always  the  difficulties, 
perplexities,  and  mistakes  may  find  a  solution 
if  they  are  interpreted  as  the  natural  accompani- 
ment of  rapidly  growing  and  highly  stimulated 
spirits. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  STRUGGLE  FOR  PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

We  tried,  in  the  preceding  chapter,  to  outline 
the  pecuHar  situation  in  which  the  undergraduate 
finds  himself.  He  is  in  the  midst  of  a  quick 
transition  from  a  mediated  to  an  unmediated 
experience.  He  possesses,  for  the  first  time, 
personal  and  intellectual  freedom.  The  oppor- 
tunity and  the  responsibility  for  self-expression 
have  been  suddenly  thrust  upon  him.  He  is  both 
elevated  and  subdued,  as  he  realizes  that  the 
discovery  and  the  testing  of  his  manhood  is  at 
hand. 

Now  the  first  test  of  that  manhood  comes  in 
his  relations  with  his  classmates.  His  inevitable 
secret  inquiry  is,  what  will  "they"  think  of  me.^ 
The  first  instinct  of  the  awakening  life  is  the  crav- 
ing for  the  support  and  admiration  of  its  com- 
rades. Though  many  an  undergraduate  would 
die  rather  than  confess  it,  what  he  most  and  really 
wants  is  popularity.  The  very  intensity  of  the 
assumed  indifference  to  undergraduate  distinc- 
tions, which  some  men  in  all  colleges  affect,  be- 
trays its  artificial  character.  It  is  the  covering  of 
boyish  pride,  the  armor,  from  the  crowd,  of  a 

31 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

sensitive  spirit,  but  it  is  rarely  the  sincere  and 
spontaneous  expression  of  the  youth's  inner  Hfe. 
Few  boys,  in  their  dreams  of  coming  college  days 
and  eager  anticipations  of  their  delights,  include 
social  insignificance  or  personal  unpopularity! 
If  we  begin,  then,  with  the  frank  discussion  of 
the  problem  of  the  boy's  personal  standing,  it  is 
because  that  problem  is  more  or  less  consciously 
in  his  mind,  even  if  never  on  his  lips,  during  the 
four  years  of  his  college  course. 

Perhaps  we  can  most  easily  get  at  the  heart  of 
the  problem  if  we  try  to  analyze  its  human  fac- 
tors. In  most  Eastern  colleges,  the  under- 
\  graduate  body  may  be  easily  divided  into  three 
'^:,  distinct  classes.  There  is,  first,  that  group,  until 
late  years  small  in  numbers,  but  now  steadily 
increasing  in  both  size  and  significance,  made  up 
of  those  who  have  come  to  college  from  one  of  the 
large  and  famous  fitting  schools.  The  boys  in 
these  private  schools  are,  for  the  most  part, 
drawn  from  one  stratum  of  American  society. 
They  are  come  from  homes  of  a  fortunate  social 
and  financial  inheritance.  They  are  already 
accustomed  to  an  easy  and  gracious  life  of  wide 
human  contacts  and  large  social  horizons.  Most 
of  them  have  known  something  of  the  delight 
and  stimulus  of  foreign  travel.  They  meet,  in 
school  days,  boys  like  themselves,  inheritors  of 

32 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

the  same  social  point  of  view,  and  of  much  the 
same  personal  standards  and  ambitions.  Now 
these  boys,  when  they  come  up  to  college,  tend 
to  ally  themselves  with  the  youth  of  similar  up- 
bringing whom  they  find  there,  because  such 
youth  offer  immediate  and  easily  recognized 
points  of  contact.  This  tendency  of  the  boys 
of  this  group  to  withdraw  among  themselves 
means,  for  the  most  part,  merely  natural  selec- 
tion. It  seldom  indicates  artificial  or  snobbish 
standards,  but,  rather,  that  social  choices  are 
being  made,  even  in  these  most  plastic  years, 
along  the  lines  of  least  resistance.  Such  choices 
are  indeed  short-sighted,  but  they  are  not  usually 
unworthy  or  vulgar.  Nevertheless  it  comes 
about,  since  these  youth  ally  themselves  with 
other  youth  who  are  already  like  themselves,  and 
whom  they  enjoy  just  because  of  this  similarity 
of  tastes  and  inheritance,  that  they  form  a  well- 
recognized  group  of  what  might  be  called  the 
complacent  provincials  of  undergraduate  exist- 
ence. 

Then  one  finds  a  second  group  in  the  American 
college.  It  is  made  of  those  boys  who  come  out 
of  that  great  middle  class  of  American  life,  which 
forms  the  bone  and  sinew  of  our  nation.  These 
boys  were  fitted  for  college  at  day  schools  and 
academies.     Most  of  them  are  the  product  of  the 

33 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

high  and  Latin  schools  of  their  several  localities. 
They  have  always  lived  at  home,  therefore,  daily 
trudging  to  and  from  the  school  building  with  a 
strapful  of  books  under  one  arm  and  the  tin 
lunch-box  under  the  other.  As  a  rule,  they  show 
better  intellectual  discipline,  less  personal  ma- 
turity, but  more  scholastic  conscience,  than  do 
they  of  the  first  group.  This  is  not  due,  I  take  it, 
to  the  fact  that  one  type  of  school  is  better  than 
the  other,  nor  does  it  indicate  that  less  able  boys 
are  to  be  found  in  the  private  than  in  the  public 
institutions.  It  is  rather  due  to  the  fact  that 
all  the  boys  from  the  private  school  are  coached 
and  sent  up  to  college,  the  feeble  with  the  strong, 
while  it  is  only  the  more  ambitious  and  capable 
lads  who  survive  the  less  sympathetic  processes  of 
the  public  school,  or  who  are  permitted  by  their 
parents,  who,  in  their  cases,  are  making  financial 
sacrifices  for  them,  to  go  on  into  college  life. 

But,  socially,  the  men  of  this  second  group 
are  not  very  sophisticated.  They  have  not  had 
the  advantages  of  boarding-school  dormitory  life, 
nor  the  opportunity,  in  their  homes,  of  meeting 
naturally  and  pleasantly  a  large  variety  of 
people.  They  are,  for  the  most  part,  used  to 
thrifty,  unostentatious,  democratic  ways  of 
living.  They  often  come  from  pious  households, 
where  they  have  been  trained  in  the  somewhat 

34 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

rigid  and  external  standards  of  a  local  religion. 
They  are  usually  men  of  sturdy  moral  vigor. 
They  look  upon  the  youth  of  the  first  group,  who 
live  their  pleasant,  care-free,  apparently  worldly 
and  abundant  lives,  with  something  of  envy  and 
something  of  disapproval.  The  self-conscious- 
ness, the  shyness  and  reserve,  which  are  char- 
acteristic of  men  at  their  period  of  development, 
tend  to  make  the  close  and  appreciative  contact 
of  these  two  groups  difficult.  There  is  between 
them  a  slight,  if  invisible,  barrier.  It  is  partly 
due,  as  we  have  been  saying,  to  a  half-unconscious 
exclusiveness,  on  the  one  hand,  and  shyness  and 
sensitiveness,  on  the  other.  It  is  more  due  to  the 
fact  that  both  groups  represent  very  young  men 
who  are  not  yet  used  to  adapting  themselves  to 
new  standards  and  habits  and  points  of  view. 
If  we  were  to  continue  the  dangerous  practice  of 
labeling  these  undergraduate  bodies,  perhaps  we 
might  call  these  men  of  the  second  group  the 
conscientious  provincials  of  the  college. 

Finally,  there  is  a  third  group  in  the  academic 
community,  and  the  one  which,  on  the  whole, 
interests  me  most  of  all.  It  is  made  up  of  those 
boys  who  have  had  no  desirable  social  or  financial 
inheritance.  They  have  come,  unaided  and 
alone,  right  from  mills  and  factories,  machine 
shops,  farms,  homes  of  day  laborers,  to  the  col- 

35 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

lege.     They  have  had  to  earn  every  penny  which 
they  have  ever  possessed.     They  have  enjoyed 
their  summer  vacation  by  means  of  peddling 
books  —  dreadful,  useless  books,  whose    extor- 
tionate prices  are  in  inverse  ratio  to  their  actual 
value!     Or  they  have   sold   aluminum   kitchen 
utensils,  or  sweated  in  a  hay-field,  or  rung  in 
fares  on  trolley-cars,  or  superintended  the  digging 
of  a  city  ditch!    They  have,  indeed,  done  any 
and  every  task  which  chance  or  inquiry  might 
offer  to  their  grim  energy  and  hot  ambition. 
Thus  they  have  got  together  enough  money  to 
present  themselves   at  the  college  in  the  fall. 
To  their  untutored  eyes  it  appears  to  offer  the 
very  bread  and  wine  of  life  for  their  eager  and 
famished  spirits.     But  these  boys  have  no  easy, 
gracious  manners.     They  have  no  savoir  faire. 
They  do  not  know  the  accepted  social  patter  of 
their  college  time  or  class.     Usually  their  clothes 
don't  fit,  and  their  hair  is  either  too  short  or  too 
long,  and  their  hands  and  feet  are  preternaturally 
big.     They  are  awkward  and  self-conscious,  and 
either  tongue-tied,  on  the  one  hand,  or  over- 
loquacious,  on  the  other.     But  they  are,  for  the 
most  part,  able  and  determined  youth,  richly 
endowed  with  the  fundamental  things  of  mascu- 
linity, will,  energy,  resource,  mental  keenness, 
daring,  and  perseverance.     These  are  the  men 

36 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

who  form  the  third  characteristic  group  of  the 
college,  and  they  might,  sometimes,  be  called  the 
conscious  and  bitter  provincials  of  the  institu- 
tion. They  know  what  hours  of  anxiety  and 
lonely  uncertainty  mean.  Whether  or  not  the 
college  education  is  worth  what  they  have  to 
pay  for  it  is  a  serious  question  with  them,  for 
they  pay  high.  They  are  come  up  for  business. 
Frankly  and  naturally,  they  try  to  get  the  best, 
and  as  much  of  the  best,  as  possible.  Nor  do 
they  infrequently  carry  off  the  severer  and  more 
excellent  prizes  of  undergraduate  life. 

Up  to  the  college,  then,  autumn  by  autumn, 
come  these  three  groups.  They  all  feel,  to  some 
degree,  the  elements  of  uncertainty,  self-distrust, 
secret  ambition.  All  of  them,  in  the  beginning, 
move  about  in  worlds  not  realized.  But  there  is 
a  general  and  vague  opinion  among  them  that  the 
college  is  a  democratic  place.  They  have  a  sort 
of  secret  hope  that  there  each  of  them  will  gain 
automatically,  just  by  being  enrolled  on  the  books 
of  the  institution,  the  coveted  measure  of  recog- 
nition. Every  man  who  is  a  classmate  will,  in 
some  way,  be  a  friend  and  a  brother.  Yet  they 
are  not  perfectly  sure  of  this,  and  there  is  some- 
thing of  challenge,  and  something  of  distrust,  in 
the  way  in  which  the  incoming  Freshmen  fur- 
tively eye  one  another.     Nor  is  it  altogether  sur- 

37 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

prising  that  they  are  not  sure  of  it.  We  have 
pretty  well  given  up  using  cant  in  the  world  of 
religion,  but  it  is  still  extensively  employed  in 
most  other  places,  and,  when  we  all  so  assidu- 
ously cultivate  this  idea  of  the  democracy  of  the 
American  college,  it  may  be  questioned  as  to  how 
much  we  really  believe  in  it  ourselves.  And  per- 
haps, then,  the  first  question  which  the  incoming 
Freshman  has  a  right  to  ask  is  what  we  mean  when 
we  talk  about  student-democracy,  and  how  far 
the  undergraduate  body  does  really  exemplify  it. 
The  first  thing  which  the  youth  should  under- 
stand is,  that  we  do  not  mean,  by  democracy  in 
college,  a  mechanical  equality  of  recognition, 
granted  to  every  youth  merely  by  virtue  of  his 
matriculation,  irrespective  of  his  character  and 
his  ability.  This  is  an  impossible  and  senti- 
mental ideal  of  democracy,  of  which  there  is  a 
hint  in  the  famous  phrase  which  eighteenth- 
century  French  philosophy  wrote  into  the  Dec- 
laration of  Independence  —  that  "All  men  are 
created  equal."  That  phrase  is  untrue,  on  the 
V  face  of  it,  in  a  world  whose  chief  factor  of 
progress  is  its  inequality.  It  is,  I  think,  of  con- 
siderable importance,  in  these  present  days,  for 
the  boy  in  college  to  understand  that  the  desire 
for  such  mechanical  equality  is  now,  and  ever  has 
been,  a  form  of  the  essential  vice  of  aristocracy. 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

and  that  it  offers  no  basis  for  real  and  lasting 
brotherhood.  For  an  aristocracy  means  a  group 
of  men  who  are  arbitrarily  given  fictitious  stand- 
ing in  the  community  without  regard  to  their 
personal  endowment  or  their  social  services. 
There  are  certain  organized  movements,  of  wide- 
spread influence  to-day,  which  are  endeavoring 
to  keep  the  capable  man  down,  that  they  may 
level  the  incapable  man  up.  These  movements 
are  proceeding,  almost  exclusively,  from  the 
bottom  of  society,  and  are  generally  regarded  as 
successful  expressions  of  democracy  and  brother- 
hood. As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are  just  the 
reverse.  They  are  a  new  working  of  the  aris- 
tocratic principle  in  its  worst  form.  It  is  just  as 
vicious  to  set  up  artificial  equalities  in  the  place 
of  natural  inequalities  as  it  is  to  create  artificial 
inequalities  in  the  place  of  natural  equalities. 
Democracy,  then,  either  inside  or  outside  the 
college,  does  not  mean  any  arbitrary  equality  of 
personal  standing.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  a  man 
must  strive  for  mastery! 

But  what  democracy  does  mean  is  equality  \ 
of  opportunity.  Hence  it  tends  to  intensify 
rather  than  diminish  human  differences,  just  be- 
cause it  gives  to  each  man  his  full  opportunity 
of  self-expression.  Whatever  place,  therefore, 
you  hold  in  college  will  depend  on  yourself !     The 

39 


THE  COLLEGE  COUESE 

motto  of  democracy  is,  "A  fair  field  and  no  favors 
and  may  the  best  man  win."  Now  it  would,  I 
think,  be  untrue  to  assert  that  a  college  com- 
munity, even  imperfectly  fulfills  the  democratic 
ideal.  But  it  is  probably  true  that  there  is 
more  of  such  democracy  in  our  colleges  than  any- 
where else.  This,  indeed,  we  should  naturally  ex- 
pect for  several  reasons.  To  begin  with,  during 
the  first  three  quarters  of  the  nineteenth  century 
the  colleges  were  almost  entirely  recruited  from  the 
American  public  schools,  where  all  the  boys  and 
girls  of  a  community  grew  up  in  natural  and 
simple  association  from  their  childhood.  The 
influence  of  these  early  homogeneous  and  demo- 
cratic groups  is  still  operative  through  various 
institutions  and  traditions  in  college  life.  Then, 
admission  to  our  colleges  is  quite  independent  of 
any  conditions  other  than  those  of  moral  and 
intellectual  fitness.  In  a  sense  it  may  be  said 
that  the  college  is  as  democratic  as  the  civil 
service;  since  any  man  may  enter  who  has  the 
minimum  of  character  and  can  pass  the  examina- 
tions and  can  pay  his  bills.  But  most  of  all,  the 
college  tends  to  be  a  place  of  fairly  even-handed 
social  justice,  because  the  principle  of  democracy 
1^  is  native  and  grateful  to  youth.  It  is  well  for 
all  men,  as  they  enter  college,  to  remember  that 
no  normal  boy,  who  means  to  keep  his  own  self- 

40 


/ 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

respect,  desires  anything  further  from  his  class- 
mates than  a  fair  chance  to  test  out  his  own 
person  and  to  display  his  own  mettle.  To  a  real 
but  limited  extent,  then,  the  college  may  be 
considered  a  democratic  community. 

But  the  moment  one  is  really  inside  the  gates, 
this  democracy  seems,  at  least,  to  be  more 
theoretical  than  real.  For  when  the  boy,  coming 
from  any  one  of  these  three  groups  which  we 
have  described,  begins  his  Freshman  year,  he 
finds  the  college  to  be  a  microcosm,  a  miniature 
world  within  the  greater  one,  and  very  like  unto 
it.  There  is,  indeed,  a  generous  recognition  of 
worth  among  most  college  men,  and  an  instinc- 
tive willingness  to  take  a  man  on  his  merits  and 
to  ignore  or  despise  superficial  or  accidental 
handicaps.  Nevertheless,  social  politics  are  not 
unknown  in  this  young  men's  world,  special  privi- 
leges have  their  place,  personal  ambitions  are 
intense,  pride  of  person  and  place  runs  high. 
What,  then,  is  the  boy  to  do.^^  He  knows  that 
now  he  is  not  preparing  for  life,  but,  rather,  that 
he  is  beginning  life  itself.  He  knows  that  the 
struggle  for  self-mastery,  and  mastery  of  the 
respect  and  allegiance  of  others,  is  not  to  come  v/ 
by  and  by,  but  is  now  upon  him.  He  knows  that 
the  first  test  of  his  personal  power  is  not  academic 
and  intellectual,  but  social.     Where  is  he  going 

41 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

to  stand?  Upon  what  plane  in  the  college  world 
is  he  to  be  found?  Like  every  normal  boy,  he 
wants  to  get  to  the  top.  What  is  the  fair  and  the 
successful  way  to  do  it? 

Well,  speaking  generally,  there  are  two  ways 
of  winning  this  personal  distinction  in  college, 
even  as  there  are  two  ways  outside  of  college. 
First,  you  can  make  social  standing  and  personal 
popularity  an  end  in  themselves.  Thus  you  can 
join  the  great  army  of  "climbers,"  to  use  Clyde 
Fitch's  expressive  and  repellent  phrase.  You  can 
buy  or  induce  a  coveted  place  by  directly  utiliz- 
ing your  family's  social  prestige,  or  your  father's 
cash-box,  or  by  moulding  yourself  servilely  on  the 
undergraduate  opinion  of  the  moment.  Thus,  of 
course,  you  repudiate  that  democracy  which  you 
had  hoped  to  find  and  on  which  you  had  meant 
to  lean.  Thus  you  reveal  that  it  is  not  the 
principle  of  brotherhood  and  equal  comradeship 
which  you  really  desire,  but,  rather,  what  you 
may  perhaps  gain  for  yourself  through  the  opera- 
tion of  that  principle.  Many  men  in  college,  it 
must  be  frankly  admitted,  expect  to  win  their 
social  standing  by  directly  bidding  for  it.  For 
this  reason  they  run  with  the  crowd,  adapt  their 
ideals  and  habits  to  the  trend  of  the  day,  and 
make  a  sort  of  weather-vane  of  themselves,  being 
always  true  to  the  current  of  the  moment,  and 

42 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

hence  never  true  long  to  anything.  That  this 
is  a  real  and  widespread  undergraduate  practice 
is  evidenced  by  the  vocabulary  which  it  has 
created.  In  one  university  such  socially  ambi- 
tious men  are  called  "heelers";  in  another 
"swipers";  in  another,  "followers."  One  is 
inclined  to  believe  that  this  ignoble,  climbing 
passion  is  indigenous  to  all  middle-class  life. 
That  is  one  great  reason  why  educated  youth, 
who  are  elected  to  be  leaders  in  our  national 
existence,  should  set  their  faces  against  it.  It  is 
rather  striking  to  recall  that  the  two  benefactors 
of  this  Republic,  its  chief  stay  in  the  beginning 
days  of  '76  and  its  savior  in  the  worst  days  of  '61, 
came  from  the  two  extremes  of  the  social  scale. 
One  was  an  English  gentleman,  in  the  best  sense 
an  aristocrat  to  his  finger-tips,  George  Washing- 
ton. The  other  was  a  son  of  the  soil,  the  gaunt 
and  awkward  rail-splitter,  Abraham  Lincoln. 
Both  were  possessed  of  the  sacrificial  spirit. 
Both  had  insight,  patience,  courage,  public- 
mindedness.  Both  won  their  place  of  power  by 
their  intrinsic  worth  and  by  the  unquestioned 
value  of  freely  rendered  service.  But  most  of  us 
are  members  of  those  classes  in  the  community 
which  have  left  the  bottom,  where  the  stark 
realities,  the  immediate  needs  and  elemental 
struggles  of  life,  keep  men  kind  and  human,  and 

43 


j 


J 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

have  not  yet  reached  the  top,  where  self-interest 
no  longer  obscures  the  vision,  and  where  in- 
herited social  experience  teaches  men  to  dis- 
tinguish between  real  and  fictitious  values. 
Therefore,  we  tend  to  think  more  of  personal 
advancement  than  it  is  worth.  Is  it  not  worth 
while  to  remember,  at  the  very  beginning  of  one's 
college  course,  that  there  are  many  men  and 
women  to  whom  immediate  social  recognition 
means  more  than  independence,  generosity,  con- 
science, even  honor  .^^ 

We  should  not,  therefore,  be  surprised  that 
not  a  few  men,  perhaps  without  confessing  it  to 
themselves,  make  social  standing  in  college  an  end 
in  itself.  They  attempt  to  reach  it  by  ignoble 
and  futile  ways,  upon  which  we  must  touch  now 
for  a  moment.  I  spoke,  in  the  preceding  chapter, 
of  the  inextinguishable  romance,  the  unconquer- 
able idealism,  of  college  life.  These  things  are  its 
essential  characteristics,  but  there  is  a  sordid 
side  to  all  this  young,  communal  life,  which  we 
must  acknowledge  if  we  are  to  be  rid  of  it.  The 
unpleasant  immaturity  of  the  undergraduate 
nowhere  more  glaringly  shows  itself  than  in  his 
eagerness  to  be  known  and  esteemed  by  the 
prominent  men  in  his  class,  his  naive  pleasure, 
when  they  think  sufficiently  of  him  to  call  him 
by  some  familiar  name.     The  assiduous  cultiva- 

44 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

tion  of  the  popular  and  the  socially  successful  is 
always  a  hateful  trait,  but  it  is  doubly  hateful  in 
young  men.  The  ardent,  generous  comrade- 
ships of  youth,  which  are  among  the  holiest  and 
loveliest  things  in  mortal  experience,  are  all 
degraded  when  this  instinct  for  self-advancement 
is  allowed  to  make  you  disingenuous  in  your 
personal  relationships.  It  is  enough,  to  quote 
John  Donne's  phrase,  "To  make  one's  mind  to 
chuckle,  while  one's  heart  doth  ache,"  to  observe 
some  of  the  lads  in  the  graduating  classes  of  our 
preparatory  schools  making  ready  for  entrance 
into  the  college  in  the  ensuing  autumn.  One 
remembers  the  Scotch  boys  and  their  worship  of 
the  university,  the  austere  intellectual  ideals 
which  it  inspires,  the  awe  with  which  they  regard 
it,  the  respect  which  they  feel  for  themselves  as 
members  of  it.  Then  we  turn  to  some  of  our 
American  youth,  who  think  of  their  colleges 
chiefly  in  the  terms  of  the  social  and  commercial 
opportunities  which  they  offer.  Is  the  college 
glorified  in  their  minds,  as  the  place  where  they 
shall  know  the  truth  and  dream  dreams  and  see 
visions  and  have  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep 
broken  up  within  them.^  No,  there  is  no  such 
admixture  of  romance  and  intellectual  idealism 
in  their  calculations.  On  the  contrary,  these 
prudential  striplings  debate  chiefly  the  location 

45 


V 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

of  their  academic  residence,  and  the  relative 
merit,  meaning  largely  the  amount  of  social 
prestige,  of  various  fraternities.  They  choose 
their  allegiances  and  activities  with  a  view  to 
desirable  social  propinquities  and  useful  friend- 
ships—  a  rather  damning  word  that,  "useful" 
friendships !  The  chief  office  of  the  college  would 
appear  to  be  to  start  them  wisely  and  well  on  a 
social  career,  to  be  a  sort  of  male  finishing  school, 
where  they  may  get  to  know  the  right  kinds  of 
people!  Is  it  likely,  if  you  are  such  a  lad,  that 
you  will  ever  touch  the  heart  of  your  college,  or 
find  your  own  heart  in  it?  Do  you  suppose  that 
thus  you  can  contribute  anything  precious  or 
distinctive  to  its  spirit?  Is  it  likely  that  you, 
so  influenced,  will  become  a  man  there?  Snob- 
bishness and  subserviency,  to  the  real,  though 
limited,  extent  in  which  they  exist  in  under- 
graduate bodies,  are  as  futile  as  they  are  un- 
natural and  repellent.  We  shall  never  make 
\  poets  and  heroes,  prophets,  scholars,  scientists, 
and  leaders,  by  any  such  processes. 

Wherever,  therefore,  the  natural  and  innocent 
desire  for  social  recognition  assumes  such  abnor- 
mal proportions  that  it  is  permitted  to  obscure 
the  sense  of  justice  and  to  lessen  the  moral  and 
personal  independence  of  the  individual,  there 
results  a  tragic  waste  of  human  material.     When- 

46 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

ever  personal  advancement  is  made  an  end  in 
itself,  it  destroys  the  native  idealism  of  youth. 
You  who  are  moved  by  selfish  and  prudential 
motives  thereby  lose  that  power  of  insight  into 
the  heights  and  depths  of  life  which  is  the  natural 
inheritance  of  your  years.  You  will  go  through 
college  never  knowing  or  developing  your  own 
genius,  slight  in  your  achievement,  commonplace 
and  obvious  in  your  impulses,  never  getting  be- 
neath the  surface,  contented  with  a  sort  of  sordid 
playing  upon  the  crust  of  life.  The  comrade- 
ships to  be  prized  are  all  born  of  that  deeper 
awakening  life  which  lies  beneath  comradeship. 
If  your  college  friendships  are  shrewdly  and 
skillfully  manufactured;  if  their  bonds  are  vul- 
gar and  immediate  self-interest,  a  lively  sense  of 
benefits  to  accrue  —  then  they  will  be  as  super- 
ficial and  impermanent  as  the  tie  which  creates 
them.  We  all  know  how  the  world  glorifies  and 
surrounds  with  inexhaustible  romance  the  Davids 
and  Jonathans  of  life,  the  poetic  friendships  of 
youth  with  youth.  We  all  have  had  our  own 
secret,  wistful  dreams  of  the  Emersonian  friend. 
What  lad,  in  the  morning  of  life,  has  not  hoped 
to  gain  for  himself  a  comradeship  so  complete 
and  intimate  that  for  him  Aristotle's  definition 
should  be  true,  and  one  soul  should  appear  to 
inhabit  the  two  bodies.     Well,  such  friendships 

47 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

are  reaL  They  are  among  the  supreme  gifts  of 
the  gods.  They  may  be  had.  They  are  the 
great  and  abiding  relationships,  surviving  all 
those  chances  and  changes  of  this  mortal  world 
which  will  begin  the  very  day  your  college  course 
shall  end.  But  they  are  only  possible  because  of 
the  generous  idealism,  the  faith,  and  the  honor  of 
youth.  They  are  born  of  the  absence  in  you 
of  sordid,  prudential,  ungenerous  calculations. 
When,  while  in  college,  you  are  living  your  best 
life  for  all  it  is  worth,  living  it  perhaps  foolishly 
and  recklessly,  but  with  intensity  and  sincerity 
and  freedom,  then,  in  the  liberation  of  per- 
sonality which  that  kind  of  life  implies,  your 
whole  nature  is  opened  up.  Then  deep  calleth 
unto  deep,  and  there  leap  from  man  to  man  the 
new  fires  of  aroused  and  eager  spirits,  and  in 
those  unquenchable  fires  of  spiritual  intensity 
the  lives  are  welded  into  one. 

Some  one  has  acutely  remarked  that  one  of 
the  depressing  things  about  the  social  situation, 
in  many  undergraduate  communities,  is  that  it 
shows  an  immense  sociability  which  rests  back 
upon  such  commonplace  bases.  There  is,  among 
you  all,  a  widespread  absorption  in  boyish  and 
trivial  interests,  a  sort  of  irresponsible  and  un- 
intelligent levity,  a  restless  and  unreflective 
activity,  without  depth  or  steadiness,  not  directed 

48 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

to  large  and  inclusive  ends.  Is  not  this  im- 
poverished social  life  partly  the  product  of  the 
motives  which  govern  your  social  choices  and  of 
personal  ambitions  which  are  not  always  worthy 
of  youth?  At  all  events,  let  us  be  sure  of  this: 
the  man  who  makes  social  standing  in  college  an 
end  in  itself  may  sometimes  get  what  he  wants,  ^ 
but  it  is  never  worth  the  getting.  For  the  per- 
manent and  adequate  satisfaction  of  the  social 
needs  and  aspirations  of  an  awakening  life  can 
never  be  found  in  exclusive,  ungenerous,  artificial 
standards  and  ambitions. 

But  there  is  another  way  to  win  personal 
recognition  and  that  confession  of  your  value 
to  the  group  whose  natural  and  legitimate  reward 
is  social  preferment.  If  you  want  personal 
success  in  college,  and  the  rewards  which  follow 
from  it,  —  and  you  have  a  perfect  right  to  want 
them,  —  then  remember  this :  those  rewards  are 
real,  and  honestly  won,  when  they  come  as  by-«/ 
products.  They  are  permanent  and  satisfying 
only  when  they  are  the  accompaniment  of  an 
efficient,  developed  undergraduate  life.  Stand- 
ing is  incident  to  worth.  Place  is  the  reward 
of  value.  If  you  succeed  in  being  valuable,  you 
will  not  find  yourself  in  a  corner.  The  trouble 
with  the  "climber,"  with  the  merely  socially  y 
ambitious  boy,  is  that  he  wants  a  place  in  the  ^ 

49 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

community  for  which  he  appears  to  have  no 
\J  soHd  qualifications,  and  that  is  why  his  position 
is  precarious  and  his  person  despicable.  But  if 
you  aim  at  the  fullest  development  of  the  highest 
and  best  life  that  a  college  community  might 
naturally  produce,  then,  in  so  far  as  you  attain 
that,  you  automatically  attain  honor  and  place 
and  power.  Now,  that  characteristic  under- 
graduate development  and  achievement  should 
be  sought  along  two  lines,  the  human  and  the 
academic.  Every  good  college  exists  for  the 
express  purpose  of  developing  the  humanity  of 
its  students  and  of  making  them  into  clear- 
thinking,  mentally  efiicient  persons.  If  you  are 
wise,  therefore,  you  will  expect  to  command  the 
respect  and  admiration  of  your  fellows,  not  by 
doing  what  they  want,  but  by  being  to  the  fullest 
extent  of  your  power  what,  in  the  long  run,  they 
all  want  to  be. 

Let  me  explain  what  I  mean.  I  have  said  that 
the  characteristic  development  of  life  in  college 
is  found  along  two  lines,  the  human  and  the 
academic.  Let  us  take  the  first  of  these,  the 
human.  When  the  college  world  is  regarded 
not  as  an  arena,  where  one  fights**  or  schemes 
for  immediate  personal  advancement,  but  as 
a  frank  and  vigorous  society  to  which  one  is 
eager  to  be  a  contributor  in  whose  willing  service 

50 


\ 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

one  may  hope  to  find  one's  self  and  place,  then 
the  road  to  the  fullest  and  happiest  development 
is  clear.  For  then,  as  you  face  these  three  groups 
of  men  of  whom  we  have  been  speaking,  you 
do  not  value  one  of  them  at  the  expense  of 
the  others,  nor  try  to  decide  into  which  of  the 
three  you  will  endeavor  to  enter,  but  you  are 
eager  to  know  the  best  that  inheres  in  them  all, 
and  get  your  fullest  development  under  the  varied 
stimuli  of  each.  Hence  you  try  to  be  broad  and 
universal  in  your  friendships,  not  in  order  to  win 
place,  but  in  order  to  develop  and  satisfy  the 
wide  and  varied  needs  of  your  own  and  your 
comrades'  life. 

Never  permit  yourself  then  to  draw  your  friends 
largely  from  any  one  group  in  your  versatile  and 
fascinating  community.  If  you  want  the  best 
self-development,  make  friends  among  all  sorts 
and  kinds  of  men.  Choose  representatives  of 
every  variety  of  youthful  excellence,  especially 
of  those  kinds  of  excellence  in  which  you  yourself 
are  deficient.  One  of  the  chief  opportunities  of 
undergraduate  life  is  the  chance  which  it  offers 
you  to  acquaint  yourselves  more  or  less  intimately 
with  a  cross.-section  of  the  American  life  of  your 
generation.  And  what  great  gifts  the  lad  strug- 
gling up  from  the  bottom,  lifting  himself  by  sheer 
self -initiative  and  ambition,  has  to  offer  the  rich 

51 


J 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

man's  son,  who,  unfortunately,  has  never  been 
obhged,  in  all  his  life,  to  drink  the  cup  of  effort 
to  its  dregs. 

I  remember  a  characteristic  passage  touching 
on  this  point,  in  the  autobiography  of  Nathaniel 
Southgate  Shaler,  long  the  beloved  and  pic- 
turesque dean  of  the  Lawrence  Scientific  School 
in  Harvard  University.  He  says:  "Here  let  me 
turn  aside  for  a  word  concerning  the  grim  aspect 
of  our  so-called  education,  which  makes  it  well- 
nigh  impossible  for  our  youth  of  the  higher 
classes  to  have  any  intimate  contacts  with  men 
who  may  teach  him  what  is  the  real  nature  of  his 
kind.  He  sees  those  only  who  are  so  formalized 
by  training  and  the  uses  of  society  that  they  show 
him  a  work  of  art  in  human  shape.  He  thus  has 
to  deal  with  his  fellows  in  terms  which  are  not 
those  of  real  human  nature,  and  thereby  much 
of  his  own  is  never  awakened.  He  may  live 
through  long,  fair-appearing  years,  yet  fail  to 
have  the  experience  necessary  to  humanize  him 
fully.  I  have  known  many  an  ignorant  sailor  or 
backwoodsman  who,  because  he  had  been  brought 
into  sympathetic  contact  with  the  primitive 
qualities  of  his  kind,  was  humanely  a  better 
educated  man  than  those  who  pride  themselves 
on  their  culture.  The  gravest  problem  of  civili- 
zation is,  in  my  opinion,  how  to  teach  human 

52 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

quality  in  a  system  which  tends  ever  more  and 
more  to  hide  it." 

Now  human  quality  is  just  what  you  may 
learn,  if  you  will,  in  the  varied  society  and  the 
relative  democracy  of  the  college  life.  Choose 
your  friends,  then,  no  matter  in  what  group  acci- 
dent has  placed  you,  among  the  men  who  in 
inheritance  and  environment  and  equipment  are 
unlike  yourselves.  Let  them  be  not  your  counter 
parts,  but  your  complements.  The  gilded  youth 
has  no  idea  of  the  delight  and  satisfaction  to  be 
found  in  close  association  with  the  boy  in  whom 
poverty  and  struggle  have  braced  the  will, 
sharpened  the  senses,  made  vivid  the  imagina- 
tion; and,  is  it  not  also  beautiful  to  contemplate, 
the  son  of  fortune  who  thus  admires  the  elemental 
virility  of  his  simpler  comrade,  has  no  idea  of 
how  much  he  has  to  contribute  to  him. 

Here,  then,  is  the  first  step  toward  a  worthy 
and  stable  social  recognition.  Be  generous  and 
cosmopolitan  in  your  friendships,  and  be  thank- 
ful for  the  extraordinary  opportunity  for  that 
kind  of  friendships  which  the  American  college 
offers.  Never  has  there  been  a  time  when  that 
word  of  advice  could  be  more  justly  given  to 
our  undergraduates  than  now.  For  the  temper 
of  our  national  life  is  increasingly  that  of  a 
world-citizenship.     International  relations  of  all 

53 


\/ 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

sorts,  commercial,  diplomatic,  scientific,  literary, 
and  religious,  are  drawing  men  together  into  a 
conscious  and  welcomed  unity.  Modern  meth- 
ods of  transportation,  the  celerity  and  ease  of 
oral  and  written  communication,  contribute  to 
this  sense  of  world-relationship.  The  mind  that 
to-day  is  only  aware  of  local  interests,  narrow 
and  traditional  standards,  is  increasingly  out  of 
place.  The  unadaptable,  untravelcd  sense,  ac- 
customed to  associate  reality  and  worth  only 
with  the  immediate,  the  certified,  and  the 
familiar,  is  increasingly  obsolete.  Artificial  and 
ungenerous  personal  standards,  therefore,  are 
rapidly  disappearing,  and  the  social  provincial  is 
really  an  anachronism.  One  of  the  significant 
aspects  of  the  present  American  life  is  the  nation's 
awareness,  as  a  nation,  of  the  world  and  its 
relationship  to  the  world.  The  race-vision  has 
come  into  its  own,  and  begun  to  play  its  part  in 
business,  diplomacy,  education,  and  religion. 
Nearly  every  note  in  the  art,  literature,  and 
drama  of  the  moment  presupposes  and  com- 
mends the  widest  sophistication.  You  would  do 
well,  then,  to  begin  now  on  the  splendid  task  of 
making  yourselves,  in  the  fine  sense,  citizens  of 
the  world,  open  and  appreciative  in  your  attitude 
toward  all  other  human  beings  and  devoid  of 
petty  social  prejudices.     For  the  first  step  to- 

54 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

ward  that  full  development,  whose  accompani- 
ment is  the  coveted  personal  recognition,  is  the 
choosing  of  your  friends  on  the  basis  of  their 
varied  and  intrinsic  worth  as  men,  irrespective 
of  station,  clothes,  manners,  or  their  present 
stage  of  sophistication.  Believe  me,  nothing  is 
more  certain  to  bring,  both  now  and  in  the  future, 
the  just  esteem  of  your  fellows,  influence  and 
recognition  among  them,  than  a  wide  and  gener- 
ous acquaintanceship  with  your  own  generation, 
a  magnanimous  and  appreciative  approach  to 
all  other  men.  If  you  have  this  wide  and  gener- 
ous humanity,  exercising  toward  those  with 
whom  you  live  and  whom  you  meet  a  sincere  and 
positive  personal  interest,  almost  any  and  every 
other  deficiency  will  count  for  little. 

And,  surely,  in  the  light  of  what  we  have  just 
been  saying  both  the  possibilities  and  the  perils 
of  the  fraternity  system  are  clear.  The  fra- 
ternity is  not  necessarily  an  undemocratic  in- 
stitution. Wherever  bodies  of  young  men  have 
been  gathered  together  more  or  less  permanently, 
they  have  tended  to  separate  into  groups  based 
upon  kindred  tastes,  aims,  and  interests.  This 
was  true  in  the  days  of  the  mediaeval  university, 
where  students  divided  into  so-called  "nations," 
drawn  together  by  ties  of  race  or  clan.  It  is  seen 
in  the  "Studenten  corps"  of  the  German  uni- 

55 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

versity,  in  the  Common  rooms  of  Oxford  and 
Cambridge.  With  us,  such  groups  take,  in  most 
colleges,  the  form  of  Greek  letter  fraternities. 
The  charters  of  these  college  clubs  embody  high 
if  vague  ideals,  and  their  so-called  secrecy,  to-day 
more  apparent  than  real,  appeals  mightily  to  the 
adolescent  mind,  and  is  probably  a  helpful  factor 
in  the  fraternity  life. 

But  it  is  only  through  wide  and  inclusive 
choice  of  contrasted  types  of  excellence  that  fra- 
ternity life  can  be  kept  wholesome  and  can  be 
made  an  aid,  not  a  detriment,  to  the  best  self- 
development.  Wherever  a  man's  friendships  are 
limited  to  his  Chapter,  he  misses  precious  oppor- 
tunities. Wlierever  his  interests  in  the  fraternity 
are  selfish  and  immediate,  rather  than  generous 
and  social;  wherever  the  fraternity  is  conceived 
of  as  existing  off  the  college,  not  living  for  it; 
and  wherever  this  cosmopolitan  and  democratic 
ideal  does  not  act  as  an  important  principle  of 
selection  in  choosing  its  members  —  there  the 
fraternity  is  a  detriment  in  the  personal  life  of 
the  youth  whose  social  development  it  thus 
restricts  to  narrow  and  conventional  lines,  and 
there  it  is  a  detriment  also  to  the  college  whose 
esprit  de  corps  it  thus  diminishes.  It  is  of  im- 
portance, I  think,  quite  as  much  for  fraternity 
men  as  for  the  "neutrals,"  that  there  be  cordial 

56 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

cooperation  and  much  mingling  between  the  two 
groups.  It  is  also  important  that  fraternity 
membership  be  not  considered  as  an  end  in  itself, 
but  as  offering  a  prized  opportunity  for  furthering 
the  human  and  social  welfare  of  the  entire  college. 
It  is  always  depressing  to  see  a  young  man  strive 
hard  to  make  himself  worthy  of  a  certain  coveted 
fraternity  or  club  in  his  college,  and  then  to  see 
him,  w^hen  he  has  made  the  club,  stop,  lie  down 
in  it,  so  to  speak,  and  feel  that  there  is  nothing 
more  for  him  to  do.  When  this  is  true,  it  would 
have  been  better  for  him  and  for  the  college  and 
for  the  society  if  he  had  never  heard  of  it. 

Here,  then,  is  one  honorable  and  effective  way 
in  which  a  wise  youth  attains  personal  recogni- 
tion. He  does  not  strive  for  it  as  if  it  were  an 
end  invaluable  in  itself,  but  he  deliberately  de- 
velops in  college  wide,  generous,  simple  human 
contacts.  His  aim  is  the  fullest  self-expression, 
rather  than  any  particular  standing  as  the  reward 
of  that  expression.  But  the  very  humanity 
which  he  gains  by  these  wide  contacts  becomes 
his  chief  social  asset. 

And,  secondly,  there  is  another  direct  way 
which  contributes  surely  and  honorably  to  the 
personal  standing  of  the  undergraduate,  namely, 
the  academic.  This  means  doing  well  in  your 
four  years  the  thing  that  you  were  sent  to  college 

57 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

to  do,  cultivating  your  own  intellectual  power, 
and  serving  the  college  in  some  characteristic 
academic  way.  For  it  is  true  of  undergraduate 
life,  just  as  it  is  true  of  all  life,  that  in  the  long 
run  men  are  recognized  on  the  basis  of  merit. 
It  is  also  true  that  eventually  that  is  conceived 
of  as  being  most  meritorious  which  is  most  in 
keeping  with  the  central  and  abiding  purpose  of 
the  institution.  Now,  your  institution  exists  to 
awaken  and  develop  mental  power.  If,  then, 
you  can  learn  to  do  some  one  thing  well  along 
literary,  dramatic,  scientific,  scholastic  lines, 
that  will  bring  you  the  respect  and  attention  of 
your  peers. 

Therefore,  were  I  a  Freshman  entering  college 
to-day,  I  should  not  merely  make  it  my  business 
to  be  catholic  in  my  friendships  and  utilize  all  the 
common,  human  opportunities  of  undergraduate 
life.  I  should  also  set  to  work  to  develop  every 
ounce  of  intellectual  power,  and  to  exercise  every 
particle  of  mental  energy,  which  I  possessed. 
So  that  before  my  sophomore  year  was  ended  I 
should  be  able  to  say, "  I  can  do  something  definite 
with  my  mind,  and  I  can  already  do  it  pretty 
well."  Most  of  you  are  obsessed  with  the  passion 
for  athletics,  and  intoxicated  by  the  spectacular 
prominence  which  the  athlete  gains.  But  in  the 
nature  of  the  case,  such  prominence  can  only 

58 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

come  to  a  very  few,  and  for  most  of  them  it  is  a 
very  doubtful  blessing.  You  fail  to  realize  the 
social  power,  the  personal  prestige,  which  accom- 
pany solid  and  severe  achievements.  If,  in  any 
one  of  the  half-dozen  departments  of  intellectual 
activity,  you  find  that  through  some  natural 
aptitude  you  can  make  a  definite  contribution  to 
the  common  intellectual  good,  focus  your  serious 
energy  and  attention  there.  Do  not  do  this 
primarily  to  the  end  of  personal  preferment.  Do 
it  for  the  enrichment  and  advancement  of  your 
college,  and  for  the  satisfying  of  your  own  in- 
tellectual self-respect.  But  you  will  certainly 
find,  that,  in  just  so  far  as  you  can  really  show 
yourself,  in  any  department  of  learning,  some- 
thing of  a  scholar  and  a  thinker,  in  just  so  far  the 
coveted  personal  recognition  and  standing  will 
begin  to  come.  No  man  who  really  becomes 
the  friend  of  his  generation  and  a  genuine 
contributor  to  the  intellectual  values  of  his 
time  need  fear  that  he  will  be  obscured  or 
misunderstood  or  forgotten.  When  a  nation, 
or  an  institution,  have  a  serious  task  on 
hand,  they  invariably  resort  to  the  democratic 
principle  in  choosing  their  leaders.  That  is, 
they  value  men,  then,  for  their  actual  powers 
and  their  solid  attainment.  He  who  can  is 
then   king.      D^veloped^pergonality-  and  disci- 

59 


THE   COLLEGE  COURSE 

pHned    powers    are    then     the    guaranties    of 
leadership. 

So,  if  you  want  social  standing  and  personal 
recognition,  they  will  come,  not  when  you 
directly  bid  for  them,  but  when  you  largely  forget 
all  about  them,  and  strive  for  those  bigger  things 
the  reward  of  whose  achievement,  the  effect  of 
whose  attainment,  is  the  respect  and  honor  of 
your  fellow  men.  It  would  be  well  for  every 
Freshman  if  he  could  have  written  up  over  the 
door  of  his  room,  where  each  day  of  his  fateful 
beginning  year  it  would  meet  his  eyes,  ''College 
I  life'^  is  never  valuable  or  real  when  it  is  separated 
from  college  work. 

It  is  true  that  the  college  fosters,  and  with 
entire  propriety,  social  and  athletic  interests  and 
activities.  But  the  college  does  not  exist  for 
these  things.  It  exists  chiefly  for  humane  learn- 
ing, for  self -development  through  scholarship.  It 
exists  to  reveal  and  commend  a  sane  and  thorough 
intellectual  approach  to  manhood.  Without 
scholarship,  the  reason  for  the  existence  of  the 
college  disappears.  Excellence  in  the  character- 
istic field  of  the  college,  then,  means  excellence 
in  learning.  Excellence  in  learning,  therefore, 
is  a  chief  means  to  excellence  in  undergraduate 
manliood.  The  best  man  in  college  is  always 
he  who  best  fulfills  the  purpose  of  the  institu- 

60 


\J 


PERSONAL  RECOGNITION 

tion  of  which  he  is  a  member.  You  were  sent 
up  to  your  Alma  Mater  to  do  two  things  —  to 
become  a  man  and  a  scholar.  If  you  are  both  a 
man  and  a  scholar,  your  standing  in  any  aca- 
demic community  is  assured. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

In  a  once  highly  vakied  and  now  largely  for- 
gotten book,  which  contains  some  of  the  most 
perfect  examples  of  condensed  and  dramatic  nar- 
ration which  our  race  has  produced,  there  is  the 
tale  of  the  tragic  end  which  befell  a  king,  who 
was  the  founder  of  a  dynasty  and  the  first 
monarch  of  his  nation.  The  record  reads:  "the 
Philistines  fought  against  Israel,  and  the  men 
of  Israel  fled  from  before  the  Philistines  and 
fell  down  slain  in  Mount  Gilboa.  And  the  battle 
went  sore  against  Saul,  and  the  archers  hit  him, 
and  he  was  sore  wounded  of  the  archers.  Then 
said  Saul  unto  his  armor-bearer.  Draw  thy  sword 
and  thrust  me  through  therewith,  lest  these 
uncircumcised  come  and  thrust  me  through  and 
abuse  me.  But  his  armor-bearer  would  not,  for 
he  was  sore  afraid.  Therefore  Saul  took  a  sword 
and  fell  upon  it."  Thus,  says  the  tale,  there 
perished,  by  his  own  hand,  one  who  had  been 
called  to  be  a  king,  and  the  sword,  which  was  the 
insignia  of  his  rank  and  the  instrument  of  regal 
opportunity,  became  his  implement  of  self- 
destruction. 

62 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

Now  it  is  not  without  design  that  we  recall 
this  ancient  tale  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter. 
It  would  be  impossible  to  write  a  series  of  talks 
on  undergraduate  problems  without  giving  a 
central  and  significant  place  in  them  to  the  moral 
struggles  of  youth.  For  the  college  stands  for 
the  development  of  character.  The  salient  dis- 
tinction between  the  college  and  the  graduate 
school  is  that  the  first  aims  at  the  development  of 
the  whole  nature  through  intellectual  and  hu- 
mane discipline,  while  the  second  takes  a  selected 
group,  to  whom  the  college  has  given  the  pre- 
pared mind  and  the  matured  person,  and  adds 
to  their  cultivation,  erudition.  It  is  because  we 
believe  a  man  to  be  more  important  than  a 
scholar  that  we  think  the  college  to  be  more 
important  than  a  graduate  school.  The  creation 
of  manhood,  then,  through  intellectual  and  moral 
discipline  is  the  significant  task  of  the  institution 
Therefor^  the  problems  of  self-control  in  youth 
must  occupy  some  large  share  of  the  attention, 
both  of  those  who  teach  and  those  who  are  taught 
in  it. 

For  manhood  may  be  summed  up  in  terms 
of  self-mastery.  The  achievement  of  manhood 
means,  very  largely,  the  discovery  and  libera- 
tion of  moral  power;  the  coordination,  under 
a  disciplined  and  intelligent  will,  of  the  physi- 


'y 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

cal  appetites,  the  mental  capacities,  the  spiri- 
tual hungers,  of  the  individual.  Such  personal 
power  most  normal  men  ardently  desire.  The 
imperious  or  the  imperial  strain  runs  in  most 
masculine  veins.  Therefore  this  discovery  and 
\J  development  of  personality,  which  is  so  inti- 
mately bound  up  with  character,  is  perhaps  the 
most  precious,  as  it  is  the  most  difficult,  office  of 
the  college.  I  say  difficult,  because  it  is  so  closely 
connected  with  the  personal  life  and  with  self- 
control  in  the  intimate  realms  of  physical  desire 
and  sensuous  delight.  Any  man  who  is  ambitious 
for  his  future,  who  desires,  in  his  brief  moment 
of  time  and  space,  to  play  some  significant  part 
on  the  world's  stage;  any  man  who,  in  his  secret 
dreams,  prefigures  his  life  to  come,  out  in  the 
distant  hurly-burly  of  the  world,  as  something 
that  is  to  be  apart  and  notable;  any  such  man 
would  do  well  to  begin  by  remembering  that  the 
highest  forms  of  personal  power  are,  at  the 
bottom,  moral;  that  control  of  desire  precedes 
control  of  self;  and  that  control  of  self  precedes 
control  of  men. 

And,  as  we  approach  the  moral  problem  of 
youth,  which  we  thus  see  to  be  the  problem  of 
personal  power,  we  come  to  it  both  with  a  sym- 
pathy and  with  a  solicitude  unlike  that  which  we 
bring  to  any  other  human  perplexity.     For  the 

64 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

worst  in  men,  in  this  moral  realm,  is  as  a  darkened 
mirror,  which  obscurely  shadows  forth  the  out- 
line of  their  best.  The  tragedy  of  the  spoiled 
and  beaten  lives  in  youth  exactly  parallels  the 
tragedy  of  Saul.  These  lives  have  become  what 
they  are  because  the  very  instruments  of  their 
opportunity  have  been  turned  into  implements 
of  self-destruction.  For  youthful  vices  are  chiefly 
the  perversions  of  virtues,  the  abuse  of  excellen- 
cies. They  represent,  for  the  most  part,  not 
forbidden  and  unlawful  tendencies,  but,  rather, 
the  highest  and  most  valuable  instincts  and 
capacities  of  the  race,  abandoned  to  license,  and 
directed  to  forbidden  or  unworthy  uses.  It 
should  never  be  forgotten,  and,  it  is  always  well 
for  youth  to  understand,  that  the  intensity  of 
the  natural  hungers  and  desires  of  a  man's  life 
is  usually  in  direct  proportion  to  his  personal 
capacity.  These  very  instincts,  if  honored  and 
controlled,  are  the  shining  instruments  of  his 
destiny.  But  if,  instead  of  being  revered  and 
conserved,  they  are  dishonored  and  exploited, 
their  motor  impulses  wasted  on  trivial  or  per- 
verse or  sensual  ends,  then  they  become  the 
consumers  and  ravagers  of  life,  and  the  accelera- 
tions of  irremediable  disaster. 

This  is  well  illustrated  in  one  of  the  common 
undergraduate    vices,    that    of    gambling.     The 

65 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

innate  love  of  taking  a  chance  is  one  of  the  most 
valuable  instincts  in  our  sex.  It  is  that  love  of 
high  risks,  that  lure  of  the  uncertain  outcome, 
that  fascination  of  the  unknown,  which  has  given 
to  the  race  its  explorers,  its  frontiersmen,  its  mili- 
tary and  political  leaders,  even  its  prophets  in 
science  and  ethics  and  religion.  When  expressed 
and  satisfied  in  such  kinds  of  lives,  the  love  of 
taking  a  chance  is  a  high  trait  of  great  social 
value.  For  it  is  then  utilized  for  honorable, 
imaginative,  socially  valuable  ends.  But  the 
youth  who  wull  spend  an  afternoon  or  evening 
shuffling  and  dealing  and  playing  cards  for  stakes 
is  giving  to  that  fundamental  and  honorable 
instinct  a  trivial  expression  and  an  unworthy  use. 
This  is  why  gambling  is  fundamentally  indefen- 
sible. The  pity  and  the  wrong  of  it  is  that  so 
high  a  trait  should  have  so  inconsequent  an 
expression.  Money  is  power.  To  risk  money 
for  no  large  end  is  to  waste  power.  To  waste 
power  is  an  economic  and  moral  misdemeanor. 
I  had  occasion,  not  long  ago,  to  visit  a 
room  in  one  of  the  ancient  dormitories  of  my 
own  college.  It  is  a  hall  in  whose  chambers, 
for  tv/o  centuries,  the  greater  sons  of  the  college 
have  lived,  and  from  whose  portals  they  have 
issued,  like  sons  of  the  morning,  to  play  their 
parts  in  their  day  and  generation.     As  I  passed 

66 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

through  the  entry,  the  door  to  one  of  these 
historic  apartments  stood  open.  The  room  with- 
in was  smoke-filled  and  close.  A  group  of  youth, 
of  a  rather  loose  and  unbuttoned  appearance, 
were  lounging  about  a  table,  noisy  of  speech,  and 
vulgar  in  posture,  playing  for  some  trivial  stake 
at  cards.  Two  hours  later,  on  reentering  the 
building,  I  saw  the  same  group,  still  engaged  in 
their  severe  and  elevating  occupation,  and,  as  I 
passed  the  door,  one  young  vulgarian  flung  his 
trump  upon  the  table,  coupling  with  the  gesture 
the  name  of  the  Galilean.  Outside  was  a  clear 
and  glorious  winter  afternoon,  the  untrodden 
snow  inviting  to  the  hills.  A  hundred  paces 
away  was  a  great  university  library,  like  that  of 
Alexandria  of  old,  offering  the  sifted  treasure  of 
the  feeling  and  thinking  of  our  race.  In  cage 
and  gymnasium  were  a  thousand  opportunities 
and  incentives  for  masculine  exercise  and  sport. 
Living  all  about  the  room  were  a  great  com- 
pany of  men  and  youth  seeking  the  high  and 
gracious  things  of  life.  But  these  striplings,  sent 
up  to  the  college  to  become  university  men, 
trusted  and  endowed  by  its  company  of  scholars 
with  freedom  and  with  leisure,  could  only  imitate 
the  grooms  of  the  stable  who  while  away  a  vacant 
hour  by  matching  coins  with  curses  in  the 
harness-room.     Here,   then,   was   a   sordid   and 

67 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

vulgar  abuse  of  fundamental  instinct.  Here  was 
a  careless  wasting  of  that  rarest  and  most  precious 
thing  in  American  life  —  leisure.  Here  was  a 
playing  with  power.  We  all  honor  the  adven- 
turing instinct.  You  will  need  all  you  have  of 
it  to  meet  gallantly  the  strifes  and  uncertainties 
of  mature  existence.  Conserve  and  strengthen 
it,  then,  by  serious  exercises  toward  great  ends. 
Do  not  exploit  and  dissipate  it.  The  love  of 
risk,  controlled  and  developed  by  being  directed 
to  moral  and  humane  purposes,  will  make  a  man 
of  you.  But  this  same  instinct,  degraded  to  the 
risking  of  money,  and  that  for  no  real  end,  except 
the  whiling  away  of  time,  or  the  covert  and  dis- 
honest hope  that  thereby  you  may  get  something 
for  nothing,  will  become  for  you  not  an  instru- 
ment of  power,  but  an  accelerator  of  disaster. 
Let  us  all  glory  in  the  daring  and  the  fearless 
spirit.  Let  us  cultivate  the  love  of  risks  that 
are  risks.  Let  them  make  a  Ulysses,  a  Balboa, 
a  Darwin,  a  Marconi,  a  Grenfell,  out  of  you. 
Let  them  make  you  into  a  hero,  not  degrade  you 
into  a  gamester. 

And  the  same  thing  is  true  of  the  youth  who 
has  habituated  himself  to  seeking  pleasure  in  the 
use  of  intoxicating  drinks.  Drunkenness,  to 
speak  in  plain  and  bitter  English,  is  also,  to  some 
extent,  an  undergraduate  vice.     I  have  no  con- 

68 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

cern  just  now  with  the  question  as  to  whether 
there  is  any  actual  food  to  be  derived  from  the 
use  of  alcohol.  For  that  is  not  a  matter  of 
opinion,  but  of  fact.  And  surely  none,  even  the 
most  casual  of  you,  can  be  ignorant  of  what  the 
facts  are.  But  I  should  like  to  again  remind 
you  that  the  very  genius  of  youth,  its  character- 
istic excellencies,  are  degraded  and  wasted,  even 
repudiated,  when,  at  your  age,  you  confess  that 
intoxicants  are  indispensable  to  personal  en- 
joyment. It  is  only  abnormal  and  defective 
youth  who  might  be  expected  to  crave  such 
stimulants.  For  you  are  beginners,  you  have 
your  unsated  emotions,  your  unspent  physical 
and  nervous  energy,  the  enormous  capacity  for 
natural  and  simple  pleasures  which  belongs  to 
the  morning  of  a  human  life.  Physical  vigor, 
intellectual  freshness,  spiritual  sensitiveness, 
which  are  the  native  attributes  of  youth,  require 
no  artificial  stimuli.  Hence,  every  time  you 
turn  to  extreme  and  artificial  pleasures  and 
stimulations,  you  betray  your  own  youth,  and 
confess  that  you  are  prematurely  old.  Is  it  not 
rather  humiliating,  for  a  young  male  in  his  late 
teens  or  early  twenties,  to  have  to  acknowledge 
that  there  is  so  little  red  blood  and  reserve  nerve 
force  in  him  that  he  really  cannot  enjoy  his 
existence  without  imbibing  enough  alcohol  to 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

quicken  his  heart  action  and  pump  abnormal 
quantities  of  blood  into  his  brain?  I  can  con- 
ceive, although  I  would  rather  die  than  come  to 
it,  that  there  is  some  excuse  for  our  elders,  they 
who  are  old,  worn,  perhaps  blase  and  disillu- 
sioned, they  who  have  lost  the  gifts  of  the  gods, 
and  must  now  be  whipped  up  to  their  pleasures, 
when  they  depend  upon  artificial  stimuli.  But 
does  not  a  man  who  stands  untried  and  unspent 
on  the  threshold  of  his  life  feel  that  he  owes  it 
to  his  very  youth  and  that  inner  self  whose 
guardian  he  is,  and  whose  testing  has  not  yet 
been  made,  that  he  docs  not  descend  to  the 
whips  and  spurs  which  the  old  and  the  broken- 
down  and  the  worn-out  have  to  use  before  they 
can  make  life  tolerable?  To  do  that  means  the 
confession  of  premature  failure.  The  drinking 
youth  tacitly  admits  that  he  is  willing  to  lose  the 
race  before  he  has  ever  begun  to  run. 

The  struggle  for  self-control  in  this  matter  of 
physical  appetite,  then,  is  not  an  arbitrary 
obligation  imposed  upon  you  from  without  by 
pious  parents  or  meddling  deans  or  ecclesiastical 
organizations.  It  is  an  obligation  of  your  own 
being.  In  every  age  of  the  world  it  has  been 
characteristic  of  the  truly  masculine  spirit  that 
it  has  preferred  and  chosen  a  frugal,  almost 
austere,   Hving   and   environment.     It   was   the 

70 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

Duke  of  Wellington,  was  it  not?  who  all  his  life 
would  sleep  upon  his  soldier's  pallet?  This  ten- 
dency in  men  is  largely  due  to  their  realization 
that  indulgence  softens  and  vulgarizes  the  in- 
dividual. Now,  surely  you  are  ambitious.  Of 
what  use  to  be  born  a  man  if  you  do  not  mean  to 
serve  and  lead?  But  the  price  of  your  coveted 
power  is  concentration  of  will  and  mind  and  1/ 
desire  on  simple,  sober,  and  exacting  things. 
You  see,  then,  why  society  quite  justly  condemns 
drunkenness  as  a  vice.  It  is  a  vice  because  it  is 
self-inflicted  injury. 

And  so  we  come  to  the  central  moral  strife 
which,  in  one  form  or  another,  is  eternally  waging 
in  the  heart  of  youth.  It  issues  out  of  the  im- 
perious sex  impulses,  out  of  the  ever-new,  ever- 
mysterious  relation  of  a  man  to  a  maid.  There 
are  many  ways  in  which  the  world  tries  to  help 
youth  to  control  and  victory  in  these,  the  most 
intimate,  most  desperate  and  significant  of  his 
conflicts.  And  most  of  these  ways  are  futile, 
because  they  are  prudential  and  commercial. 
And  prudential  and  commercial  motives  can 
make  small  headway  against  the  hungry,  mount- 
ing desires  of  inexperienced  and  unexliausted  lives. 
When  one  is  dealing  with  able  and  promising 
youth,  of  large  potential  capacity,  of  how  much 
use  is  it  to  warn  them  that  to  walk  the  primrose 

71 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

path  of  dalliance  does  n't  pay,  that  the  physical 
risk  and  the  nervous  exhaustion  are  too  certain 
and  too  great?  I  remember  listening,  as  an 
undergraduate,  to  a  "medical  lecture,"  given  by 
authority  to  my  classmates  and  myself.  I  re- 
member that  it  filled  me  with  physical  and  mental 
nausea.  I  learned  some  things  from  it,  not  so 
very  many,  that  I  did  n't  know  and  did  n't  want 
to  know.  I  thought  then,  and  I  think  now,  that 
detailed  physiological  and  pathological  informa- 
tion on  sex  matters,  related  to  youth  in  public 
meetings,  is  a  grave  mistake.  I  am  sure  there 
will  always  be  some  youth  who  will  regard  it  as 
a  personal  insult.  Knowledge  of  all  these  things 
will  not  keep  a  worth-while  boy  from  wrong- 
doing. Timid  and  prudential  considerations  are 
only  operative  with  timid  and  prudential  people. 
They  may  act  as  secondary,  cumulative,  deter- 
rents, or  they  may  show  one  how  to  endeavor  to 
sin  with  impunity.  The  natural  safeguard  against 
these  sorts  of  vices  is  modesty,  and  profound, 
innate  distaste  of  them.  There  are  impenetrable 
and  proud  reserves  which  are  a  native  heritage 
of  well-bred,  masculine  youth.  To  break  down 
these  reserves  is  a  brutal  and  an  indecent  thing. 
The  natural  help  to  self-control  is  a  youth's  own 
sense,  if  his  elders  will  let  him  keep  it,  of  the 
sacredness   and   mystery   of   natural   processes. 

72 


THE  FIGHT  FOU  CHARACTER 

That  knowledge  of  his  self,  and  the  perils  and 
possibilities  that  attend  the  awakening  of  self, 
which  the  father  imparts  to  his  son  may  be 
carried  as  a  precious  talisman  through  the 
storms  and  the  fights  of  youth.  The  revelation 
of  a  father's  comradeship  and  a  father's  under- 
standing, the  meeting  of  parent  and  child  on  the 
inner  and  sacred  ground  of  their  common  being, 
the  intimate  and  tender  instruction  received 
from  the  nearest  and  the  holiest  lives  we  know, 
this  will  fortify  youth  as  will  nothing  else 
against  degrading  and  impure  practices.  But 
the  sex  hysteria,  still  raging  in  this  country,  is 
only  explaining  vice  by  way  of  exploiting  it.  It 
is  so  intermixed  with  commercial  motives,  mor- 
bid sentimentalism,  and  semi-salacious  curiosity, 
as  to  be  chiefly  abhorrent  to  a  well-bred,  high- 
minded  youth. 

Yet  just  such  youth  must  battle  with  the 
fiercest  of  these  temptations,  nor  will  commercial 
virtue,  nor  fear  of  physical  consequence,  nor  the 
threat  of  public  opinion,  nor  a  merely  inherited 
morality,  suffice  to  carry  them  through  their 
fight.  It  is  one  of  the  moving  paradoxes  of  the 
moral  life  that  it  is  most  often  the  ablest,  finest 
and  most  sensitive  spirits  who  must,  with  grim 
intensity,  wage  the  fiercest  battle  to  gain  the 
captaincy  of  their  lives.     There  is  a  little  verse 

73 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

among  the  published  writings  of  John  Henry 
Newman,  he  of  the  delicate  nervous  organism, 
he  who  was  a  mystic,  a  scholar,  and  a  saint,  which 
bears  pathetic  witness  to  the  lots  of  thousands  of 
his  fellow  human  beings: 

"O,  Holy  Lord,  who  with  the  cliildren  three 

Didst  walk  the  piercing  flame; 
Help,  in  those  trial  hours  which,  save  to  Thee, 

I  dare  not  name; 
Nor  let  these  quivering  eyes  and  sickening  heart 

Crumble  to  dust  beneath  the  tempter's  dart. 

"Thou  who  didst  once  Thy  life  from  Mary's  breast 

Renew  from  day  to  day; 

O  might  her  smile,  severely  sweet,  but  rest 
On  this  frail  clay! 
Till  I  am  thine  with  my  whole  soul,  and  fear 

Not  feel,  a  secret  joy,  that  Hell  is  near." 

Now,  obviously,  if  we  are  to  talk  of  the  moral 
struggle,  to  men  who  know  what  the  experience 
is  which  these  lines  indicate,  then  the  talk  must 
be  lifted  far  above  physical  processes  and  semi- 
professional  advices.  For  the  youth  who  battles 
hardest  with  sex  temptations  is  precisely  he 
who  is  well  aware  of  the  moral  indefensibleness 
and  the  physical  peril  of  his  position.  But  these 
lesser  and  secondary  considerations  are  inopera- 
tive in  his  case.     He  cannot  be  sufficiently  moved 

74 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

by  the  abstract  appeal  to  prudence,  or  right,  or 
good  sense.  In  place  of  all  this,  what  most 
youth  need  to  help  them  in  these  fights  is  an 
appeal  to  their  holiest  imagination,  to  their 
deepest  and  tenderest  instincts.  They  need  not 
the  condemning,  but  the  glorifying,  of  these 
desires  which  threaten  to  destroy  them.  We 
should  be  wise  enough  to  give  a  man  a  vision  of 
the  power  with  which  a  controlled  and  conserved 
desire  will  endue  him.  To  these  lads  who,  it 
moves  us  to  remember,  have  had  as  yet  not  one 
of  the  essential  experiences  of  human  life,  we 
should  present  the  future,  and  make  them  see 
what  precious  and  significant  satisfactions  of 
their  natures  await  them  there.  Above  all,  we 
should  try  to  show  them  that  it  is  in  these  very 
instincts,  when  they  are  controlled  and  honor- 
ably satisfied,  that  leadership  and  worth  them- 
selves reside.  Few  men  can  successfully  repress 
their  natures.  But  a  man  may  so  revere  his 
nature  that  in  his  high  regard  for  it,  and  for  its 
largest  uses,  he  will  control  and  subdue  it. 
Youth  best  fights  the  sins  of  the  flesh,  not  by 
hating  the  instincts  which  underlie  them,  nor 
by  being  ashamed  of  those  instincts,  but  by  so 
prizing  them  that  he  refuses  to  drag  them  in 
the  mire  of  unbridled  practices. 

In  short,  the  initial  thesis  of  this  chapter  is 
75 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

markedly  true  in  this  area  of  the  moral  conflict. 
Here,  of  all  places,  sins  are  to  be  clearly  dis- 
tinguished from  those  excellencies  of  which  they 
are  the  perversions.  Vice  is  vice  here,  because 
it  is  the  abuse  of  virtue.  It  rests  with  you 
whether  all  the  awakening  forces  of  your  lives, 
proudly  acknowledged  and  honored  by  you,  shall 
be  the  instruments  of  your  coming  opportunity. 
If  they  are  not  that,  they  are  certain  to  be  the 
implements  of  self-destruction.  But  surely  all 
of  us  have  high  and  daring  ambitions.  We 
mean  both  to  give  and  receive  honor  from  our 
fellow  men;  therefore  we  propose  to  first  honor 
ourselves.  Surely  this  is  the  word  for  the 
promising  lives  who  are  weary  and  disheartened 
with  the  battle  against  sex  temptations.  You 
must  so  prize  and  exalt  the  forces  and  hungers 
within  you,  to  which  these  temptations  are  wit- 
nesses; you  must  be  so  certain  that  these  very 
imperious  desires  are  among  the  chief  and  noblest 
assets  of  your  life,  that  therefore  you  cannot 
exploit  or  dissipate  them  now.  And  may  I  hold 
up  before  you,  for  the  remaking  of  that  high 
vision,  four  great  lines  of  power,  four  avenues 
of  influence,  which  self-control  in  these  matters 
opens  up  to  you,  but  which  the  lack  of  self- 
control  automatically  closes.. 

First:    The   obvious   foundation   of   all   real 
76 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

personal  power  is  self-respect.  But  it  is  certain 
that  he  who  surrenders  to  these  temptations 
despises  himself.  True,  he  may  disguise  by 
ingenious  sophistries  the  nature  of  his  deeds. 
No  one  is  better  versed  than  the  self-indulgent 
boy  in  making  his  mind,  not  his  friend,  but  his 
accomplice.  But  beneath  all  the  specious  reason- 
ing and  self-deceit,  there  is  always  the  protesting 
cry  of  his  own  nature,  the  shame  and  sorrow  of 
his  own  soul.  Inevitably,  therefore,  in  such 
moral  surrender  he  gradually  breaks  down  his 
self-respect.  Whether  or  not  the  things  he  does 
are  known  to  any  one  but  himself  is  quite  im- 
material. The  dreadful  and  the  damning  thing 
is  that  he  knows  that  he  does  them.  Whenever 
men  dishonor  their  bodies  by  grave  abuses; 
whenever,  for  the  sake  of  a  moment  of  nervous 
ecstasy,  they  divide  the  inner  Kingdom  of  Life 
against  itself  and  outrage  their  own  souls,  they 
thereby  shatter  their  very  personality.  When- 
ever a  man  will  give  himself  up  to  indiscriminate 
and  common  usage,  he  becomes  as  contemptible 
as  the  hideous  vulgarity  of  his  practices.  When- 
ever a  man,  obsessed  by  passion,  will  expose  the 
most  intimate  sanctities  of  his  person  to  any 
chance  stranger  whom  he  can  hire  with  a  few 
dollars  to  permit  him  to  do  so,  the  effect  upon 
self -faith  and  the  disintegration  of  personal  power 

77 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

are  appalling.  Whenever  men  are  willing  to 
offer  the  very  secrets  of  their  being  to  another 
human  life  with  which  they  have  no  previous 
acquaintance,  with  which  they  have  nothing  in 
common,  except  the  quickly  recognized  bond  of 
their  mutual  secret  lust,  then  they  cannot  expect 
either  to  believe  very  much  in  themselves  or  to 
be  able  to  inspire  confidence  in  others.  The 
agonies  of  remorse  and  contrition  into  which 
youth  react  from  these  unbridled  practices  are 
the  clearest  indication  of  their  devastating  and 
consuming  effect  upon  the  will  and  spirit.  They 
make  sincerity  of  personality  impossible,  and 
with  sincerity  is  relinquished  power.  For  what 
life  is  more  futile  than  that  which  is  distracted 
within  by  the  dissipations  without?  The  loftiest 
form  of  power  is  character.  "  What  you  are 
speaks  so  loud,  men  cannot  hear  what  you  say." 
The  first  condition  of  character  is  self-respect, 
without  which  there  is  no  basis  for  character. 
And,  we  may  add,  for  you  who  stumble  and  grow 
weary,  and  are  quite  discouraged  in  the  fight, 
that  character  brings,  so  soon  as  you  begin  to 
achieve  it,  its  own  exceeding  sweet  reward,  a 
reward  that  is  more  than  a  recompense  for  all 
the  darkness  and  helplessness  and  shame  which 
lie  behind.  Few  experiences  of  expanding  youth 
are    more    precious    than    the    first    conscious 

78 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

dawning  of  the  sense  of  self-control,  the  growing 
experience  of  moral  mastery.  This  experience 
the  youth  carries  out  with  him,  into  the  long 
succession  of  his  gradually  lessening  conflicts,  as 
his  talisman  and  shield  until  the  day  dawns 
when  he  knows  what  Dante  meant  when  he 
wrote  in  the  "Purgatorio,"  — 

"And  thou  shall  see  those  who  contented  are  within  the  fire. 
Because  they  hope  to  come,  whene'er  it  may  be,  to  the 
blessed  people." 

Second:  The  next  great  liberation  and  expan- 
sion of  personal  power  comes  with  the  function 
of  the  lover.  The  great  romance,  which  is  the 
natural  and  precious  heritage  of  youth,  awakens 
and  develops  personal  capacity  as  does  no  other 
experience  in  life.  On  some  not  too-distant  day, 
it  is  to  be  hoped  that  you  will  meet  that  woman 
who  will  have  for  you  a  bright  significance  to 
which  no  other  human  being  can  ever  approach. 
^You  will  see  in  her  the  very  epitome  of  all  that 
is  fairest,  most  honorable,  most  desirable,  in  this 
mortal  world.  And  you  will  hunger  for  her  with 
all  your  heart,  and  the  joy  of  that  hunger  will 
not  have  one  taint  of  misgiving  or  of  self-re- 
proach. It  will  not  be  your  badge  of  shame 
but  your  crown  of  honor.  And,  if  you  are  really 
grown  up  and  a  man,  when  that  day  comes,  you 

79 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

will  take  to  yourself  that  newly  discovered  life, 
and  say,  "I  know  you,  and  have  known  you 
ever  since  first  I  was;  and  I  have  searched  for 
you  all  these  years,  and  now  I  have  found  you, 
and  life  is  complete  and  you  are  mine.  You 
are  my  woman,  and  I  your  man,  and  I  am  going 
to  give  myself  to  you  forever  and  forever.  I 
relinquish,  O  my  woman,  my  body  and  my  mind 
and  my  spirit,  unto  you."  And  she  will  be  the 
clear  candle,  shining  for  you  in  the  dark  country 
of  the  world.  When  you  look  into  her  eyes,  you 
will  see  mirrored  there,  not  what  you  are,  but 
that  transfigured  being  which  she  thinks  you  are. 
If  you  say  to  her,  "I  am  not  this  which  your  soul 
sees,"  she  will  answer,  "You  are  this  very  thing. 
My  love  sees  deeper  than  your  self-distrust." 
And  so  the  inspiration  of  that  companionship, 
the  reinforcement  of  that  faith,  will  develop  in 
you  insights  and  capacities,  a  versatility  of  worth 
and  a  nobility  of  spirit  of  which,  without  her,  you 
would  never  even  have  dreamed.  And  then, 
through  long  and  many-colored  days,  and 
crowded,  weary  years,  you  will  yet  live,  a  com- 
pleted man  at  last,  finding  yourself  in  your  mate, 
and  in  the  children  springing  by  your  side. 

Now  this  is  the  supreme  gift  of  the  gods, 
multiplying  indefinitely  your  personal  powers  and 
your  abiding  happiness.     These,  a  wife's  faith 

80 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

and  a  child's  affection,  are  the  refreshments  of 
life  which  neither  the  changes  of  time  nor  all  the 
envious  blows  of  fate  can  take  away.  But  all 
this,  which  means  the  very  liberation  of  the  soul, 
is  not  given  by  life  to  third-rate  men.  If  your 
lives  have  lost  their  capacity  for  romance,  what 
then.f^  Suppose  you  no  longer  have  the  power  to 
idealize  our  human  world !  If  you  have  lost  that 
mingled  reserve  and  frankness,  modesty  and 
courage,  which  belongs  to  unspoiled  youth,  you 
cannot  make  this  generous  surrender,  nor  know 
the  glorious  madness  of  a  supreme  passion.  If 
you  have  thrust  profane  and  unscrupulous  hands 
into  all  the  mysteries  of  life,  so  that  everything 
is  known,  and  your  eyes,  too  old,  look  unabashed 
into  every  corner  of  the  world,  and  nothing  is  left 
in  holiness  and  reserve,  you  cannot  thus  believe. 
There  are  men  who,  in  these  days  of  dawning  life, 
are  willing  to  make  any  horrid  experiment  for 
the  sake  of  a  new  sensation.  But  life's  revenge 
on  them  is  terrible  and  sure.  For  when  their 
supreme  hour  comes,  and  they  meet  at  last  her 
who  might  have  been  the  rose  of  all  their  world, 
they  are  either  unable  or  unwilling,  or  unafraid, 
to  love.  That,  I  should  suppose,  is  the  final 
depth  of  masculine  humiliation.  And,  with  that 
inward  moral  defeat,  breaks  the  mainspring  of 
their  power. 

81 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

Surely,  then,  in  talking  of  the  moral  problem 
to  the  able  and  valuable  youth  of  any  college, 
that  which  it  is  truest  and  most  decent  to  say  to 
them  is  this:  "Of  course,  to  you,  the  light  and 
peace  of  moral  victory  is  indispensable.  Of 
course,  you  will  fight  for  that,  even  though  it  be 
with  a  broken  sword,  and  with  your  back  against 
the  wall  —  fight  until  you  win  or  die !  For  you 
look  forward,  being  able  men  and  true,  to  that 
day  when,  through  your  marriage,  you  shall,  with 
inexpressible  joy,  enter  into  the  meaning  of  love. 
You  foresee  the  morning  when,  holding  your  own 
son  within  your  arms,  you  shall  have  finally 
arrived  at  your  majority.  When  his  frail  and 
tender  baby  hands  reach  out  to  yours,  and  his 
helpless  life,  unknowing  and  unconscious,  is  laid 
in  the  hollow  of  your  hand,  for  you  to  make  or 
mar,  then  you  will  be  recompensed  for  all  the 
discipline  of  the  body  and  the  travail  of  the 
spirit."  We  are  too  apt  to  associate  supreme 
worth  and  sacredness  only  with  the  convention- 
ally religious  things  of  life.  Therein  we  make  a 
great  mistake.  The  most  sacred  places  of  our 
world  are  not  the  monasteries,  nor  the  cathe- 
drals, nor  the  ancient  shrines,  nor  even  heroes' 
graves,  nor  the  soil  that  is  all  compounded  of  the 
blood  and  dust  of  martyrs.  The  sacred  places 
of  the  world,  as  a  great  New  England  minister 

82 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

has  recently  said,  are  those  where  children  are 
born  to  an  honorable  lover  and  his  true  beloved. 
It  is  toward  such  holy  places  that  you  now  should 
worship  day  by  day  and  night  by  night. 

Third:  Another  source  of  vital  influence  and 
personal  power  is  found  in  the  happy  carrying  on, 
into  the  burdens  and  conflicts  of  middle  age,  of 
the  freshness  and  simplicity  of  youth.  The  best  x/' 
men  are  only  boys  grown  up.  The  great  ser- 
vants and  teachers  of  the  race,  said  Phillips 
Brooks,  have  been  its  simplifiers.  They  have 
lived  for  a  few,  indispensable,  natural  human 
things;  they  have  brought  men  back  to  fun- 
damental values  and  to  first  principles.  It  is 
always  true  that  the  men,  who  are  found  suffi- 
cient when  difficult  and  critical  tasks  are  to  be 
done,  are  those  sublimely  simple  souls  who  have 
retained  the  heavenly  capacity  to  see  life  in  the 
large,  to  grasp  its  out-standing  values,  and  to 
ignore  the  thousand  modifying  and  confusing  con- 
siderations which  paralyze  their  lesser  brethren. 
There  are.  Brooks  continues,  "men  whose  first 
healthy  instincts  have  been  developed  and  en- 
riched by  wide  human  contacts  without  altering 
their  character  in  the  process."  They  are  still 
natural,  uncomplicated,  ingenuous,  and  this 
makes  them  potent  among  their  fellow  men. 
For  that  which  wins  the  allegiance  of  our  brothers 

83 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

quickest,  is  not  intellectual  superiority  and  per- 
sonal sophistication.  They  dislike  the  one,  and 
they  distrust  the  other.  It  is  rather  a  frank  and 
ready  idealism  which  attracts  them,  a  sincere 
and  candid  sentiment,  the  absence  in  us  of  self- 
consciousness,  or  of  finical  considerations.  Great- 
ness often  means  just  the  preservation  of  these 
primary  qualities.  There  is  a  kind  of  fine  provin- 
cialism which  high  and  simple  men  retain.  A  man 
may  be  catholic  in  his  sympathies,  accomplished 
in  activities,  cultivated  in  his  appreciations,  adept 
in  all  the  better  ways  of  human  intercourse,  and 
yet  be  easily  moved  to  admiration,  to  laughter 
and  to  tears,  and  find,  in  the  voice  of  a  child, 
the  smile  of  a  woman,  the  sound  of  the  sea  upon 
the  beach,  the  wistful  cadence  of  a  song,  that 
which  still  sets  all  his  blood  on  fire  in  his  veins 
and  girds  his  will  for  a  thousand  times  ten 
thousand  strifes.  A  man  may  be  every  inch  a 
citizen  of  the  world,  at  ease  wherever  men  may  be, 
and  yet  have  so  retained  his  natural  sentiment 
that  he  cannot  forget  that  distant  place  where 
his  forbears  are  buried,  nor  forego  the  hope  that, 
when  the  tumult  and  the  shouting  die,  and  the 
last  ounce  of  energy  is  expended,  and  the  last 
thought  hammered  out,  he  may  lie,  at  the  end, 
among  his  own,  his  dust  mingling  with  that  of 
those  from  whom  he  came,  with  whom  he  is  at 

84 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

home.  Such  simpHcity  and  charm  of  spirit,  such 
continued  sensitiveness  to  elemental  instinct, 
means  carrying  the  naturalness  of  the  child  and 
the  spontaneity  of  the  youth  on  into  the  strenu- 
ous and  complicated  career  of  middle  age.  And 
it  is  more  precious  than  words  can  tell.  Great 
men,  every  year  they  grow  older,  find  that  life 
moves  them  more  profoundly.  Hence  they  are 
able  to  move  it. 

But,  here  again,  the  basis  of  such  simplicity 
and  spontaneity  of  temperament  is  largely  moral. 
Nothing  so  surely  destroys  it  as  premature  or 
unlawful  grasping  at  the  supreme  experiences  of 
life.  Because  it  is  born  of  an  inextinguishable 
faith  in  the  essential  goodness  and  beauty  of  the 
world,  and  this  faith  in  the  world  is  born  of  faith 
in  one's  self.  Those  who  delight  in  life  are  those 
who  have  not  exploited  life.  The  boy  who  is 
most  sincerely  to  be  pitied,  in  any  college,  is  he 
whose  eyes  are  already  opened  to  the  evil  in  his 
associates,  who  already  sees  the  canker  in  the 
rose  of  the  world.  When  you  begin  to  see  life 
in  the  light  of  common  day,  then  the  common 
fates  are  yours.  The  tragedy  of  immoral  living, 
from  this  point  of  view,  may  be  summed  up  in  a 
word.  You  have  exchanged  your  youth  for  your 
pleasures;  you  have  lost  your  naturalness  in  your 
sin;  indulgence  has  killed  your  spontaneity;  and, 

85 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

in  dissipating  the  rosy  vision  of  the  world,  one 
instrument  of  power  has  slipped  from  your  hands. 
Finally,  there  is  a  fourth  source  of  personal 
power,  the  rarest,  widest,  and  deepest  of  them  all, 
which  is  likewise  inexorably  bound  up  with  the 
personal  issues  of  the  moral  life.  This  is  the 
power  of  a  capacious  humanity.  There  are  two 
ways  in  which  we  use  the  qualifying  adjective 
"human"  in  reference  to  other  people.  The 
first  way  is  common  enough.  We  often  say  of 
a  man  that  he  is  a  very  human  sort  of  person,  to 
indicate  his  gift  of  meeting  easily  and  pleasantly 
all  sorts  and  kinds  of  men  and  women.  We  have 
all  seen  public  persons,  or  politicians,  who  were 
people's  men,  easily  accessible,  shrewd  in  their 
judgments  of  human  nature,  affable  and  good- 
natured,  adroit  in  adapting  themselves  to  every 
possible  situation.  Out  of  an  easy  democracy 
they  appeared  to  be  the  genial  and  ready  com- 
rades of  all  sorts  of  folk,  and  quickly  established 
points  of  contact  with  very  diverse  groups  of 
people.  This  is  a  common  and  not  a  particularly 
significant  endowment.  It  has  no  necessary 
connection  with  personal  character.  There  are 
men  of  all  sorts  and  kinds  of  character,  or  the 
lack  of  it,  who  possess  it.  Indeed,  the  experience 
of  the  world  has  not  been  altogether  happy  with 
this  type  of  person,  and  men  tend  to  associate 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

with  this  power  accompanying  traits  of  shrewd 
expediencies,  intense  personal  interests,  and  baser 
adaptabihties.  The  world  has  grown  to  distrust 
men  who,  chameleon-like,  take  their  hues  from 
the  environment  of  the  moment,  and  very  rarely 
does  one  feel  in  such  men  the  quality  of  great- 
ness. It  seems  worth  while  to  say  all  this, 
because  the  "popular  man"  is  so  deified  by 
youth,  and  yet,  not  infrequently,  he  is  a  rather 
dubious  person. 

But  there  is  another,  far  higher  and  rarer 
sense,  in  which  a  man  may  be  said  to  be  a  great 
human  being.  There  is  a  quality  of  public- 
mindedness,  quite  inseparable  from  moral  ideal- 
ism, which,  if  a  man  has  it,  at  once  lifts  him  into 
leadership.  One  American,  Abraham  Lincoln, 
was  supremely  possessed  of  it.  You  remember 
the  phrases  that  Emerson  uses  regarding  him: 
"Lincoln  is  the  true  history  of  the  American 
peoples  in  his  time.  Step  by  step  he  walked 
before  them;  slow  with  their  slowness,  quicken- 
ing his  march  by  theirs;  the  true  representative 
of  this  continent,  an  entirely  pubKc  man,  the 
pulse  of  twenty  millions  throbbing  in  his  heart, 
the  thoughts  of  their  minds  articulate  on  his 
tongue." 

This,  then,  is  what  I  mean  by  the  power  of  a 
capacious  humanity.     Such  men  are  in  intimate 

87 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

and  potent  touch  with  the  world,  not  because  of 
any  facile  adroitness  or  cultivated  amiability, 
but  because  of  the  amount  of  human  nature  to  be 
found  within  them.  They  incarnate,  so  to  speak, 
their  time.  Their  lives  are  ample  and  sincere  and 
inclusive.  They  are  of  a  sublime  generosity,  an 
amazing  faith;  they  have  great  depth  of  insight 
and  inexhaustible  and  patient  sympathy.  Nar- 
rowness or  hardness  or  selfish  pride  of  life  are 
beyond  their  comprehension.  The  artificial  and 
the  conventional  are  unknown.  They  live  in  the 
abiding  realities  of  our  human  nature,  that  nature 
of  which  Goethe  said  that,  while  mankind  was 
always  progressing,  man  himself  remains  ever 
the  same.  Thus  they  are  able  to  interpret,  in 
the  terms  of  their  own  experience,  all  the  lives 
which  they  touch.  Do  you  think  there  is  any 
higher  power  than  this,  to  be  able  to  cover,  in 
thought  and  feeling,  the  human  world  before 
you!  To  be  worthy  to  stand  for  the  common 
human  nature  of  your  day!  Is  not  such  com- 
plete understanding  and  interpretation  of  human 
lives  the  ultimate  end  of  education.^  Is  there 
any  limit  to  the  gracious  usefulness  and  power 
which  such  an  endowment  gives  to  the  in- 
dividual.^ But,  once  more,  we  are  to  remember 
that  such  power  is  primarily  moral.  It  springs 
out  of  an  all-sufficient,  inexhaustible  idealism. 

83 


THE  FIGHT  FOR  CHARACTER 

It  is  maintained  by  the  faith  and  the  purity  of 
the  individual.  It  cannot  be  separated  from  a 
native  nobihty  of  soul;  its  very  elements  are 
service  and  sacrifice  and  unselfish  love. 

Now,  there  are  such  men  who  may  truly  be 
called  the  friends  of  their  race.  Wherever  in  the 
various  departments  of  human  effort  they  are 
found,  they  are  as  great  rocks  in  a  weary  land. 
To  them  their  fellow  men  turn  to  renew  their 
faith  and  vision,  to  find  their  power  and  their 
peace.  What  would  it  not  mean  to  you,  O 
youth,  beginning  college  days,  with  all  the  free- 
dom of  your  youth  upon  you,  if  you,  in  the  years 
to  come,  could  enter  into  the  life  of  your  genera- 
tion with  such  profound  and  noble  understanding 
of  it,  and  bless  it  with  your  power!  Is  there  any 
mark  of  greatness  more  veritable  than  this, 
ability  to  identify  yourself  with  your  generation, 
to  interpret  and  inspire  and  empower  it?  And  is 
it  not  worth  while,  remembering  how  all  these 
avenues  of  powers  are  closed  to  him  who  betrays 
himself,  for  you  now  to  begin  to  say,  "I  will 
stand  in  awe,  and  sin  not.  I  will  commune  with 
my  own  heart  on  my  bed,  and  be  still.^"  For 
surely  I  do  not  need  to  tell  you  that  such  visions 
of  humanity,  such  conservation  of  the  powers 
and  the  insights,  the  freshness  and  the  faith  of 
youth,  are  only  the  portion  of  the  undefiled. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT  AND  THE  CHRISTIAN 
EXPERIENCE 

When  the  youth  approaches  the  religious  problem 
of  his  time  and  race,  he  enters  the  most  fascinat- 
ing area  of  all  human  experience,  the  area  where 
men's  noblest  instincts  gain  their  expression,  and 
where  their  motives  take  their  rise.  In  no  other 
department  of  human  thought  and  effort  are  men 
so  poignant  in  their  convictions,  so  bitter  in  oppo- 
sitions, so  nobly  tenacious  of  position.  Nowhere 
else  does  feeling  run  so  high,  or  is  the  mind  more 
abused  or  exalted,  or  the  will  so  completely 
exercised.  This  is  because  the  religious  in- 
stinct is  so  universal  and  so  precious  to  the 
human  race.  Men  guard  their  religious  habits 
and  ideas  as  they  guard  few  other  things,  because 
the  experience  of  countless  generations  has  taught 
them  how  indispensable  they  are  to  power  and  to 
peace.  There  is  a  real  sense  in  which  men  may 
be  said  to  be  incurably  religious;  and  religion, 
as  distinguished  from  various  religions,  is  the 
common  experience  of  us  all. 

Now,  nowhere  is  this  experience  more  keenly 
felt  than  in  youth.     Indeed,  the  great  religious 

90 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

leaders  of  the  race  have  been,  for  the  most  part, 
young  men;  and  the  greatest  of  them  died  a 
youth  of  thirty- three.  It  is  a  silly  prejudice, 
therefore,  which  conceives  of  the  college  student 
as  irreligious,  and  such  a  conception  is  the  re- 
verse of  the  truth.  Nearly  all  youth  are  in- 
stinctively and  profoundly  religious.  Of  all 
people  in  the  world,  they  most  feel  the  inward 
urge  to  discuss  the  fundamental  questions  and  to 
attack  the  insoluble  problems.  No  one  ponders 
more  sincerely  than  they  over  the  origin  and  the 
destiny  of  our  race.  Ancient,  organized  expres- 
sions of  religion  do  not  always  interest  them. 
The  ruling  passion  of  youth  is  for  freedom,  sim- 
plicity, and  sincerity.  Therefore,  wherever  con- 
ventionalized religious  forms  appear  to  curtail 
freedom,  or  to  be  substituting  expedient  policies, 
disingenuous  or  elaborate  systems,  for  a  sincere 
and  simple  faith,  there  youth  is  quickly  in  revolt. 
But  the  capacity  for  religious  experience  —  more 
than  that,  what  we  may  call  the  spiritual  sense  — 
is  very  rarely  absent  from  normal  young  men  and 
women.  Often  it  most  clearly  shows  itself 
in  these  very  protests  against  expedient  and 
outworn  religious  symbols.  When  a  man, 
therefore,  is  talking  on  religion,  there  is  no  one 
from  whom  he  could  be  more  sure  of  a  sym- 
pathetic   and    interested    hearing   and   a   large 

91 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

measure    of    common    understanding   than   the 
undergraduate. 

As  we  approach,  then,  this  problem  of  peren- 
nial and  universal  interest,  I  should  like  to  try 
to  do  three  things;  first,  to  state  what  this 
universal  religious  instinct  is;  secondly,  to  give 
the  Christian  expression  and  explanation  of  that 
instinct;  and,  thirdly,  to  point  out  what,  in  the 
light  of  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  is  meant  by  the 
Christian  doctrine  of  salvation.  We  begin,  then, 
with  the  instinct  itself,  which,  together  with  the 
desire  for  food  and  clothing,  and  the  sex  hunger, 
is  one  of  the  three  fundamental,  motor  impulses 
of  the  race.  Henry  Scougall  gave  a  popular 
definition  of  religion  many  years  ago,  when  he 
called  it  "The  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man." 
Max  Muller  has  a  better  definition,  when  he 
says,  in  "Natural  Heligion,"  that  "Religion  is 
the  perception  of  the  Infinite,  under  such  mani- 
festations as  are  able  to  influence  the  moral 
character  of  man."  Now,  what  does  this  mean? 
Two  things  chiefly.  It  means,  first,  that  our 
race  has  a  dim  but  stubborn  sense  of  the  delusive 
and  inadequate  nature  of  temporal  things  and 
mortal  experience.  There  is  an  ineradicable 
conviction,  found  among  all  nations  and  kindreds 
and  tongues,  that  the  world,  which  seems  to  lie 
before  our  mortal  vision  so  real  and  bright  and 

92 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

true,  does  actually  gain  both  its  substance  and 
its    significance    from    immaterial    and    unseen 
powers.     The  solid  walls,  the  lofty  roof,  all  which 
the  hands  can  touch,  the  eyes  can  see,  and  the 
tongue  can  taste  —  this  is  but  the  insubstantial 
pageant  of  a  dream.     It  is  the  ever-changing  and 
obscuring  expression  of  a  changeless  reality  which 
pervades  it  all,  but  which  is  not  to  be  identified 
with  it,  for  it  was  before  it,  and  will  be  after  it. 
To  use  the  language  of  Oriental  philosophy,  our 
visible  world  is  a  vast  and  varied  veil;    it  is  a 
cloud,  an  entangling  mesh,  behind  which,  keeping 
watch   within    the   shadow,    stands   the   higher 
Something-not-Ourselves  which  makes  for  right- 
eousness, the  Providence  or  Nemesis  of  the  world, 
the  gods,  whom,  as  Lucretius  said,  "All  men 
fear,  but  all  men  yearn  after."     In  every  age 
great  souls  have  voiced  this  awareness  of  some- 
thing above,  beyond,  and  without,  from  which 
they  themselves,  and  all  which  they  saw  and 
knew,   derived  their  significance.     This  experi- 
ence, in  the  terminology  of  religion,  would  be 
called  the  belief  in  a  god  or  gods.     Men  have 
sung  their  song  or  proclaimed  their  message  or 
compassed  their  achievement  with  the  clear  per- 
ception of  its  incompleteness.     They  have  known 
that   they   were   moving   about   in   worlds   not 
reaHzed.     They  have  chafed  at  the  limitations 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

of  time  and  space  and  mortal  sense.  They  have 
been  conscious  of  being  haunted  by  an  elusive 
and  flying  goal,  which  disturbed  them  with  a 
glimpse  of  more  permanent  and  final  things.  It 
is  this  perception  of  the  inner  and  unchanging 
reality,  which  is  quite  independent  of  time  and 
space,  which  has  been  the  hope  and  inspiration 
of  our  race.  In  every  generation,  men  have 
found  strength  for  the  battle  and  peace  for  the 
pain  by  seeing  our  inscrutable  human  life  as  an 
interlude  in  that  fuller,  freer  reality  which  was 
before  it,  which  shall  be  after  it,  which  to-day 
lies  roundabout  it.  They  have  found  the  key 
to  Nature,  the  interpretation  of  man's  physical 
environment  through  regarding  it  as  the  expres- 
sion of  a  supreme  intelligence  beyond  it  all. 
Nearly  three  thousand  years  ago  there  lived  a 
poet  who  wrote,  "The  heavens  declare  the  glory 
of  God,  and  the  firmament  showeth  his  handi- 
work."    Another  who  said:  — 

"Whither  shall  I  go  from  thy  presence. 

Or  whither  shall  I  fly  from  thy  spirit? 

If  I  ascend  up  into  heaven,  thou  art  there. 

If  I  make  my  bed  in  hell,  behold  thou  art  there. 

If  I  take  the  wings  of  the  morning, 
And  dwell  in  the  uttermost  parts  of  the  sea. 
Even  there  shall  thy  hand  hold  me 
And  thy  right  hand  shall  lead  me." 
94 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

In  1798,  in  England,  Wordsworth  published  in 
the  "Lyrical  Ballads,"  perhaps  the  most  signif- 
icant piece  of  verse  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
in  which  this  same  instinct  finds  another  of  its 
myriad  expressions.  You  remember  the  lines 
in  "Tintern  Abbey": — 

"For  I  have  learned  to  look  on  nature 

Not  as  in  the  hour  of  thoughtless  youth. 

But  hearmg  oftentimes  the  still,  sad  music 

Of  humanity,  nor  harsh,  nor  grating. 

But  of  ample  power  to  chasten  and  subdue. 

And  I  have  felt  a  Presence  which  disturbs  me 

With  the  joy  of  elevated  thoughts. 

A  sense  sublime  of  something  far  more  deeply  interfused 

Whose  dwelling  is  the  light  of  setting  suns 

And  the  round  ocean  and  the  living  air 

And  the  blue  sky  and  in  the  mind  of  man. 

A  motion  and  a  spirit  that  impels  all  thought. 

All  objects  of  all  thought. 

And  rolls  through  all  things." 

It  is  this  perception  of  the  Divine  which  has 
created  our  philosophy  and  maintained  our  meta- 
physic.  It  is  this  which  lies  deepest  in  human 
hearts.  It  makes  the  warfare  bearable  and  the 
days  tolerable.  It  makes  men  eager  to  live,  yet 
nobly  curious  to  die.  The  foundation  of  all 
human  hopes  and  dignity,  the  source  of  racial 
reverence  and  faith,  is  this  perception,  that  One 
like  unto  a  God,  untouched,  lofty  and  serene, 
walketh  with  us  amid  the  fiery  furnace  of  our  life. 

95 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

The  second  clement  of  this  religious  instinct  is 
the  sense  of  perplexity  and  bafflement_and  un- 
easiness which  accompanies  this  perception. 
Men  know  a  God,  but  they  seem  to  be  removed 
from  Him.  They  feel  the  Eternal,  yet  they  tend 
to  fear  and  hide  themselves  in  the  presence  of 
the  Eternal.  Indeed,  man's  ever-failing  but 
never-ending  struggle  against  baffling  odds,  to 
grasp  and  understand  and  live  with  the  Divine, 
is  the  most  noble  and  tragic  expression  of  our 
race.  For  between  the  two,  the  Eternal  Spirit, 
unseen  but  felt,  and  the  hesitant  and  uncertain 
spirit  of  a  man,  there  would  seem  to  be  a  great 
gulf  fixed.  Desire,  insatiable,  unwavering,  looks 
out  from  the  eyes  of  each  generation  of  our  race. 
It  is  this  incredible  intensity  and  persistency  of 
striving  and  longing  which  is  both  the  tragedy 
and  the  glory  of  our  common  lot.  The  main- 
spring of  human  activity,  the  creative  impulse, 
from  which,  in  devious  ways,  all  the  thousand- 
hued  motives  of  our  lives  proceed,  is  revealed 
in  the  ancient  cry,  "My  soul  thirsteth  for  God, 
for  the  living  God."  That  unquenched  thirst 
for  Him  underlies .  all  human  life  as  the  solemn 
stillness  of  the  ocean  underlies  the  fretful  waves. 
This  is  what  William  James  called  the  uneasinesS" 
of  the  race,  the  sense  of  something  being  wrong 
about  us  as  we  naturally  stand.     It  is  this  which 

96 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

has  built  the  altars,  prescribed  the  penances,  and 
made  the  pilgrimages.  Out  of  this  have  grown 
the  rites  and  ceremonies,  the  scourgings  and 
renunciations  of  the  various  ancient  faiths. 
From  this  unquenched  thirst,  this  profound  un- 
easiness, the  immeasurable  volume  of  human 
prayer  has  issued,  bearing  up  to  heaven,  through 
uncounted  generations  of  the  race,  the  vision  and 
the  anguish,  the  love  and  the  tears,  of  our 
common  humanity.  Thepathetic  readiness,  the  \ 
guileless  eagerness  of  mankind,  to  give  its  faith 
to  any  occult  and  mystic  thing,  from  table- 
tipping  and  palm-reading  up  through  the  long, 
sordid,  tawdry  list  to  the  present  popular  methods 
of  praying  to  one's  own  thought  and  hypnotizing 
one's  own  self  —  these  all  bear  witness  to  man's 
persistent  but  uneasy  endeavor  to  grasp  and  be  ( 
reconciled  with  this  elusive  spirit.  "  The  dynamic  | 
of  the  world  is  the  sense  of  the  divine  reality." 
The  woe  of  the  world  is  man's  inability  to  dis- 
cover and  appropriate  that  reahty.  All  human 
sorrow  originates  in  the  sense  of  being  apart  from 
God  or  the  things  or  the  children  of  God.  You, 
when  you  shall  have  entered  truly  into  life,  will 
perceive,  beneath  all  the  glitter  of  its  brilliance 
and  its  genius,  underneath  the  roar  of  its  energy 
and  achievement,  the  note  of  melancholy.  The 
great  undertone  of  life  is  solemn  in  its  uniformity 

97 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

of  pathos.  The  poets  and  prophets  of  every 
age  have  seized  unerringly  upon  that  melancholy 
undertone.  Sophocles,  long  ago,  heard  it  by  the 
^gean,  and  it  inspired  his  somber  dramas  of  the 
turbid  ebb  and  flow  of  human  misery.  Some- 
times the  voices  of  our  humanity,  as  they  rise, 
blend  and  compose  into  one  great  cry  that  is 
lifted  shivering  and  tingling  to  the  stars:  "O 
that  I  knew  where  I  might  find  Him!"  Some- 
times, and  more  often,  they  sink  into  a  half 
unconscious,  subdued,  and  minor  plaint,  in- 
finitely touching  in  its  human  solicitude,  per- 
plexity, and  pain.  You  know  how  Arnold 
phrases  that  undertone  in  "Dover  Beach": 

"Ah,  love,  let  us  be  true 

To  one  another!    For  the  world  which  seems 

To  lie  before  us  like  a  land  of  dreams, 

So  various,  so  beautiful,  so  new. 

Hath  really  neither  joy,  nor  love,  nor  light, 

Nor  certitude,  nor  peace,  nor  help  for  pain. 

And  we  are  here  as  on  a  darkling  plain 

Swept  with  confused  alarms  of  struggle  and  flight. 

Where  ignorant  armies  clash  by  night." 

This,  then,  is  the  experience  which  you_haye 
inherited  as  children  of  the  human  race.  In 
brief  and  conventional  language,  we  call  it  the 
sense  of  God  and  the  sense  of  sin.  This  is  what 
we  mean  when  we  say  that  men  are  naturally 
religious.     We  mean  that  each  generation  has, 

98 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

as  a  matter  of  fact,  found  itself  born  into  a 
struggling,  baffled,  troubled  world,  a  world  aware 
of  the  Divine  beyond  the  obvious,  but  also  of 
some  self-erected  barrier  which  kept  it  from  the 
Divine;  a  world  caught  in  the  snare  of  the  seen 
and  the  temporal,  but  reaching  out  to  the  Unseen 
and  the  Eternal.  The  theologies  and  the  philos- 
ophies, the  faiths  and  superstitions,  the  sublime 
religious  affirmations,  the  passionate  religious 
negations,  are  all  the  products  of  this  fact  of 
human  experience.  Without  it,  the  word  "be- 
liever" and^lhe.„word  "skeptic"  would  neither 
of  them  have  any  significance,  nor  would  they 
ever  have  come  into  existence.  Both  represent 
diverse  interpretations  of,  contrasted  attitudes 
toward,  the  common  instinct  of  us  all. 

This,  then,  is  religion.  What,  then,  is  Chris- 
tianity?. The  Christian's  religion  is  that  accept- 
ance and  explanation  of  the  human  instinct 
which  rests  back  upon  the  Person  and  the 
teaching  of  Jesus.  Christianity  takes  this  uni- 
versal belief  and  makes  two  specific  affirma- 
tions regarding  it;  sublime,  or,  if  you  please, 
audacious,  affirmations.  It  asserts,  first,  that 
there  is  an  objective  Reality,  which  answers  to 
this  universal  subjective  instinct.  There  is  a 
God,  one  true  and  changeless  Spirit,  out  of  whose 
depths  issued  your  spirit  and  mine.     That  which 

99 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

haunts  the  soul  and  will  not  let  it  be  is  not  a 
delusion,  a  self-suggested,  self-projected  Being, 
issuing  from  our  fancied  need.  It  is  the  most 
solemn  and  potent  of  all  realities.  This  is  the 
basic  and  comprehensive  message  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  This  will  be  your  stay,  when  in  the 
years  to  come  you  begin  to  struggle  against  time. 
That  which  invests  the  Church  with  her  inde- 
fectible dignity  and  significance  is  that  she  stands 
as  the  witness  that  in  the  beginning  and  in 
the  present  and  in  the  ending,  from  everlasting 
to  everlasting,  is  God.  He  surrounds  and  inter- 
penetrates and  includes  the  life  of  every  man  and 
every  thing.  In  Him  all  beauty,  goodness,  and 
truth  exist  forever  and  forever.  In  Ilim  all 
beings,  races,  worlds,  and  universes  live  and 
move.  Whatever  we  do  He  hath  graciously 
made  possible.  Every  successful  endeavor  is  the 
permitted  expression  of  his  energy.  Every  true 
thought  is  a  spark  struck  from  the  anvil  of  the 
Supreme  Mind.  Every  pure  hope  and  high 
desire  is  the  breath  of  his  holy  spirit.  Every 
deed  and  tendency  of  our  daily  life  is  real  or 
unreal,  significant  or  impotent,  as  it  is  in  har- 
mony or  out  of  harmony  with  Him.  Beneath 
and  around  all  our  ignorance  of  God  is  his 
intimate  and  inclusive  perception  of  ourselves. 
Christianity  begins  with  this  proclamation:  "O 

100 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT     '  - ' '  '^^' ' ' ' ' ' 

men  who  dream  of  the  stars  and  of  your  kinship 
with  a  timeless  and  imperial  world,  is  it  not  a 
solemn  and  sobering  thing  to  know  that  your 
dream  is  true!" 

But  Christianity  does  more  than  this.  After 
aflSrming  the  reality  of  God,  it  has  its  own 
distinctive  method  of  realizing  that  reality. 
Here  we  come  to  what  is  probably  most  salient 
and  precious  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  Men  have 
often  thought  of  God  in  terms  of  a  crude,  physical 
anthropomorphism,  as  a  sort  of  Oriental  poten- 
tate, a  projected  political  and  material  power. 
They  often  have  conceived  of  Him  in  terms  of 
abstract  speculation,  trying  to  make  Him  every- 
thing which  man  is  not.  But  Jesus'  vision  of 
God  is  not  in  the  terms  of  a  crude,  physical 
anthropomorphism,  nor  in  the  terms  of  the  abso- 
lute, or  of  abstract  a  priori  speculation.  It  is 
He  who  teaches  us  to  endeavor  to  approach  and 
know  the  Infinite  by  means  of  the  ethical  and 
spiritual  experience  of  our  race.  It  is  not  merely 
monotheism,  therefore,  but  ethical  and  spiritual 
monotheism,  which  is  characteristic  of  the  Judaic- 
Christian  faith.  Jesus  teaches  that  God  is  justly 
conceived  of  when  we  think  of  Him  as  the 
Eternal  Father,  Lord  of  heaven  and  earth,  known 
to  us  in  terms  of  redeeming  and  sacrificial  love. 
This  love  is   both   supremely   exemplified   and 

101 


• ''  "'  '  '      THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

bestowed  in  Him.  He  is  the  God  who  loveth  all 
his  children  with  an  equal  and  impartial  affec- 
tion, making  his  sun  to  shine  on  the  evil  and  on 
the  good,  and  sending  rain  on  the  just  and  on 
the  unjust.  He  does  not  dwell  afar  in  some 
flaming  sun  of  his  mighty  universe,  a  remote  and 
stationary  being,  occasionally  breaking  into  this 
world  to  manifest  Himself  in  prodigious  and 
inexplicable  ways.  But  He  is  a  present  spirit, 
encompassing  and  infusing  each  particle  of  his 
creation.  The  Father  of  all,  his  love  goeth  out 
to  embrace  them  all.  Every  man  born  into  the 
world  He  follows  with  love  from  the  beginning 
until  the  very  end.  No  man  need  ever  be  weak, 
for  the  Father  desires  to  perfect  his  weakness 
in  his  strength.  No  man  need  ever  be  con- 
sumed with  restlessness  and  discontent,  for  the 
Father  waiteth  to  endow  him  with  the  abundance 
of  his  peace.  No  man  need  ever  be  lost,  because 
the  Shepherd  is  always  seeking  his  wandering 
sheep.  No  man  need  ever  be  discouraged  by 
reason  of  the  sins  of  his  youth,  for  this  is  the 
Father  who  sees  the  prodigal  coming  a  long  way 
off,  and  runs  and  falls  on  his  neck  and  kisses  him. 
What,  then,  is  the  Christian  content  of  this 
universal,  divine  perception.^  What  is  Jesus' 
idea  of  God?  It  is  infinite  spirit,  manifested  in 
the  terms  of  redemptive  love,  a  love  so  freely  and 

102 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

supremely  given  that,  in  the  words  of  Jesus  to 
the  Samaritan  woman,  we  know  that  God  seek- 
eth  his  true  worshipers.  It  is  redemptive  love 
supremely  exemplified  in  service,  so  that,  in  the 
touching  example  of  Jesus,  he  who  knoweth  that 
he  comes  from  God  and  goes  to  God  will,  in  his 
supreme  moment  of  God-likeness,  gird  himself 
with  a  towel  and  wash  his  disciples'  feet.  It  is 
a  redemptive  love,  which  not  only  yearns  over 
men,  and  delights  to  serve  them,  but  will  carry 
service  to  the  uttermost  point  of  sacrifice,  so 
that  they  who  are  filled  with  this  God's  spirit, 
and  are  like  Him,  might,  with  Paul,  wish  them- 
selves accursed  of  God  for  their  brethren's  sake, 
or  might,  with  Jesus,  hang  forsaken  of  God  upon 
a  cross,  for  the  sons  of  man. 

How  marvelous,  then,  original,  audacious,  and 
incredible  is  Jesus'  interpretation  of  the  common 
instinct  of  our  race!  The  Spirit  which  haunts 
the  world  and  will  not  let  it  be  is  not  an  angry, 
nor  an  imperial,  nor  an  exacting  master,  but  a 
beneficent  Redeemer,  revealing  Himself  to  us  in 
a  single-minded,  educative,  reformative,  con- 
structive love.  This  God,  whom  the  world  has 
both  feared  and  yearned  after,  is  not  a  gloomy 
and  transcendent  monarch,  dark  with  vengeance, 
resistless  in  purpose,  unflinching  in  justice, 
grinding  out  the  lives  of  evil  men  beneath  the 

103 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

chariot  wheels  of  his  inexorable  law.  He  is  not 
an  arbitrary  pagan  God,  a  whimsical  spirit, 
sporting  impishly  with  his  helpless  and  amusing 
creatures,  feeling  no  obligations  toward  us,  his 
manifold  and  minute  creations,  who  crawl  ant- 
like over  our  little  speck  of  earth.  Nor  is  He  a 
sort  of  glorified  St.  Nicholas,  sitting  up  there  in 
the  heavens,  a  vast  and  unethical  Benevolence, 
smiling  vacantly  as  He  tosses  out  his  indiscrimi- 
nate gifts,  his  affection  a  lazy  and  indulgent  fond- 
ness for  men,  like  that  which  the  cat  shows  for 
her  litter  of  kittens.  Men  have  often  thought  all 
these  things  regarding  Infinity!  But  no!  God 
is  a  moral  Being,  caring  infinitely  for  us,  and  con- 
fessing his  obligations  towards  us,  because  He  has 
made  us  moral  beings  too.  Our  importance  in 
the  eyes  of  the  Infinite  rests  in  the  fact  that  there 
is  no  relationship  capable  of  being  measured  or 
appraised  between  material  bulk  and  moral 
worth.  Infinitesimal  as  we  are,  evanescent  and 
futile  as  is  the  shadow  of  our  day,  we  are  yet 
precious  to  the  Eternal,  because  his  breath  is 
within  us,  and  we,  like  gods,  can  distinguish 
between  good  and  evil.  The  interest  of  the 
Eternal  Majesty,  then,  in  us,  is  not  an  unethical 
love,  which  winks  at  sin,  and  cares  not  greatly 
if  we  break  its  laws,  and  trusts  in  man's  automa- 
tic, ultimate  arrival  at  righteousness.     It  is  a 

104 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

severe  and  holy  affection,  which  has  nothing 
whatever  to  do  with  sentimental  or  complacent 
or  indulgent  passion,  a  love  whose  content  is 
service,  whose  method  is  sacrifice,  whose  goal  is 
racial  redemption,  which  is  given  to  us  not  be- 
cause of  what  we  are,  but  because  of  what, 
through  it,  God  has  willed  we  should  become. 
It  is  a  love,  then,  so  pure  and  holy  that  it  will 
send  every  discipline  and  bend  every  will  to  bring 
men  to  desire  that  end  to  which  they  were 
divinely  destined;  a  love  which  will  send  us  into 
hell,  a  thousand  hells,  indeed,  if  that  is  what  we 
need  to  make  us  willing  to  let  the  best  in  us 
express  and  come  to  itself.  Only  such  is  the 
mystery  of  the  divinity  of  this  sovereign  and 
redemptive  love  that  it  elects  to  share  every 
detail  of  the  experience  of  its  children,  and  will 
go  into  hell  with  us,  suffering  there  a  greater 
agony  than  our  own,  like  the  Jesus  who  for  us 
men  and  our  salvation  knelt  in  unutterable  and 
inexplicable  anguish  beneath  the  gray-leaved 
olives  of  Gethsemane.  This,  then,  is  the  first 
thing  in  the  Christian  teaching.  There  is  a  God, 
man's  instinct  has  played  him  true;  and  that 
Tjrod  is  known  to  the  race,  oh,  incredible  assertion, 
in  the  terms  of  holy,  ministering,  sacrificial  love. 
The  second  thing  in  the  Christian  teaching 
is  this:    Man  who  is  uneasy  in  God's  presence 

105 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

may  become  reconciled  to  Him.  He  may  find 
God  and  himself  in  God.  It  was  the  very  intent 
and  mission  of  Jesus,  his  conscious  purpose  in  the 
world,  to  show  us,  that,  from  the  very  beginning, 
this  is  what  God  has  desired,  that  always  the 
Eternal  Life  has  been  flowing  out  toward  us, 
and  that  we  have  nothing  to  do  but  to  believe  in 
it,  accept  it,  and  by  its  power  live  ourselves  in 
the  high  realms  of  service,  joyous  sacrifice,  and 
the  loving  spirit. 

But  how  can  we  believe  in  such  a  God.'^  How 
is  it  possible  to  have  such  a  stupendous  faith? 
Because  of  Jesus.  The  most  wonderful  thing  in 
the  finite  world  that  we  know  is  that  He  lived 
this  God  life.  The  things  He  said  God  was,  He 
was.  The  life  was,  so  to  speak,  incarnate  in 
Him.  This  gracious  and  Eternal  Spirit,  ob- 
scurely seen  and  reached  after  in  all  the  universe, 
came  into  our  world,  in  an  especial  and  ideal  way, 
in  Him.  It  may  be  said,  without  irreverence, 
that  God,  in  so  far  as  a  human  mind  can  grasp 
or  need  Him,  became  in  Jesus  an  empirical  fact. 
Jesus  is,  therefore,  the  world's  hostage  for  its 
sublime  belief.  He  came,  an  event  in  time  and 
space,  and  was,  this  loving,  serving,  and  sacri- 
ficial fife.  So  we  know  such  a  life  is  real  and 
possible,  and  possible  even  in  this  unjust  and 
sorrowful   world.     For   we   have   seen   it   here. 

lOG 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

Jesus  proves  it.  Indeed,  He  said,  and  if  He  had 
not  said,  men  from  their  own  experience  would 
have  known,  that  He  came  into  the  world  that 
we  might  know  that  God  is,  and  that  He  is  the 
Redeemer  of  his  children.  This  is  why  men  have 
turned  to  Jesus  as  the  One  altogether  lovely,  as 
the  One  through  whom,  and  by  whom,  they  have 
been  saved,  to  their  eternal  selves  and  their 
Eternal  Father.  It  is,  then,  through  Jesus,  be- 
cause of  what  He  was  and  did,  that  we  are  able 
to  believe.  The  noblest,  happiest  thing  a  human 
being  ever  does,  the  act  which  comprehends  the 
very  essence  of  faith  and  good  will,  is  when  he 
says:  "I  will  believe  in  and  return  to  God,  for 
Jesus'  sake,  and  choose  for  myself  the  spiritual 
life."  For  then  a  new  power  flows  into  his  being, 
and  then  he  begins  to  know  the  heavenly  Father 
for  himself.  Then  belief  in  God  is  no  longer 
accepting  Him  entirely  on  faith;  for  then  we 
have  begun  the  verification  by  experience,  and 
we  know  of  ourselves  and  within  ourselves  that 
we  are  dealing  with  realities. 

And  this  new  proof  from  within  substantiates 
itself  by  enabling  us  to  live,  to  some  extent,  the 
God  life  of  which  Jesus  spoke,  and  which  He  was. 
For,  moved  by  this  new  spirit  within  us,  we 
begin  to  be  able  to  love  our  fellow  men  in  the 
same  way  that  God  loves  us,  and  to  find  our  lives 

107 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

in  the  sacrificial  service  of  our  race.  It  is 
Christians  who  prove  the  Christian  experience, 
and,  in  every  generation,  there  have  been  some 
Christians  in  the  world.  If  we  had  only  a  Paul, 
an  Augustine,  a  St.  Francis,  a  Luther,  a  Wesley, 
or  a  Brooks,  we  should  have  enough  to  know  that 
what  Jesus  said,  and  was,  is  true. 

We  begin  to  understand,  then,  do  we  not? 
what  it  means  to  be  a  Christian.  It  means  to 
take  the  same  attitude  toward  the  world  that 
Jesus  took,  and  to  love  our  fellow  men  with  the 
same  sort  of  love  wherewith  God  loves  us.  Then 
we  must  serve  men  according  to  their  need,  not 
according  to  their  desert,  even  as  God  has  done 
more  for  the  worst  of  us  than  the  best  of  us  could 
possibly  deserve,  and  has  thought  more  of  the 
sheep  on  the  mountains  than  of  those  secure 
within  the  fold.  So  we  long  to  bless  them  that 
curse  us;  for  how  an  evil,  cursing  heart  needs 
blessing!  Transformed,  so  to  speak,  by  this 
vision  of  the  eternal  grace,  the  magnanimity  of 
Divinity,  we,  too,  pour  out,  for  and  around  men, 
an  unexpected,  undeserved  affection;  we  eagerly 
and  gladly  give  them  what  no  law  could  demand 
and  no  force  could  compel.  We  are  patient  with 
our  brothers,  we  believe  in  them,  we  put  our- 
selves in  their  places;  we  forget  our  comforts  and 
our  desires,  in  their  wants  and  needs.     We  give 

108 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

more  to  the  worst  of  them  than  they  would  ever 
have  dreamed  of  expecting  from  us,  because  we 
have  found  that  our  God  is  more  wilKng  to  hear 
than  we  to  pray,  and  ever  giveth  to  us  exceedingly 
abundantly,  above  all  we  could  ask  or  think. 
We  know,  through  practice,  what  was  the 
principle  of  conduct  in  Jesus'  mind,  when  He 
cried,  in  his  vivid  Oriental  hyperbole  of  speech, 
"If  a  man  ask  my  coat,  with  joy  I  give  him  my 
cloak  also;  if  he  smite  me  on  one  cheek,  I  turn 
to  him  the  other,  and  if  he  want  me  to  walk  a 
mile  with  him,  I  go  with  him  twain."  For  this 
is  but  a  picturesque  illustration  of  the  Christian 
principle  by  which  men  have  ever  known  the 
disciples  of  Jesus;  the  principle  of  the  out- 
reaching,  forth-giving  life,  the  life  which  is  only 
limited  in  its  service  and  its  comradeship  by  the 
perception  of  its  neighbor's  need  or  the  extent 
of  its  neighbor's  capacity  to  receive. 

The  Christian  experience,  then,  is  not  summed 
up  in  conformity  to  pious  practice,  nor  in  the 
mere  attainment  of  personal  character.  Indeed, 
the  distinctively  Christian  experience  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  begun  with  the  mere  attainment 
of  character.  For  discipleship  of  Jesus  means 
character  for  service  and  salvation  for  the  com- 
munity. No  one  can  be  united  with  God  unless, 
in  principle  and  desire,  one  becomes  like  Him. 

109 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

But  to  be  like  Him  one  must  be  the  lover  and 
servant  of  the  race,  just  as  He  is  the  Lover  and 
Saviour  of  the  race.  Union  with  God,  then,  is 
accomplished  by  oneness  with  humanity.  If  I 
love  not  my  brother  whom  I  have  seen,  how 
can  I  love  God  whom  I  have  not  seen?  Hence, 
to  be  a  follower  of  Jesus,  means  to  be  a  lover  of 
men.  It  means  vicarious  suffering,  spontaneous, 
irresistible  outgoing  for  less  fortunate  men.  It 
means  a  poignant  sensitiveness  to  human  need, 
an  unquenchable  protest  against  human  injustice, 
an  unutterable  yearning  to  supply  deficiencies 
for  the  handicapped,  and  tenderest  healing  for 
the  w^ounded.  It  means  that  you  and  I,  re- 
stored and  empowered  with  the  divine  love  and 
light,  ache  with  desire,  burn  with  intensity  to 
redeem  with  it  our  fellow  men.  Mazzini,  states- 
man of  the  new  Italy,  had  caught  the  Christian 
spirit  when  he  said,  "When  I  see  any  one  called 
good,  I  ask,  'Who,  then,  has  he  saved.^'" 

"But,"  you  will  say,  "is  this  Christianity.? 
I  thought  to  be  a  Christian  meant  accepting  a 
certain  plan  of  salvation;  I  thought  it  meant 
believing  in  the  Virgin  birth;  I  thought  it  meant 
subscription  to  the  metaphysical  doctrine  of  the 
deity  of  Christ.  I  supposed  a  Christian  was  one 
who  held  a  certain  view  of  the  inspiration  of 
Scripture.     I  thought  Christian  discipleship  car- 

110 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

rled  with  it  the  acceptance  of  one  world-view. 
I  did  n't  see  how  you  could  be  a  Christian,  for 
instance,  and  beheve  in  evolution.  Besides,  I 
supposed  that  for  Christians  there  were  certain 
things  you  could  do,  and  certain  other  things 
you  could  n't  do.  Surely,  Christianity  means 
going  to  church  and  praying  and  reading  your 
Bible  and  not  being  worldly.  Why,  I  have  even 
been  taught  that  if  you  were  a  Christian,  you 
might  not  dance  or  play  cards  or  go  to  the 
theater.  Is  n't  the  Christian  a  sort  of  holier- 
than-thou  person,  who  has  to  repress  most  of 
his  natural  instincts  and  go  through  the  world 
a  deadly  respectable,  hopelessly  good  person? 
The  thing  of  which  you  have  been  speaking  here 
is  incredibly  difficult,  indeed,  and  almost  un- 
believable, but  such  a  life  v/ould  be  so  radiant 
and  joyous,  so  high  and  true  —  there  is  some- 
thing very  deep  in  me  that  answers  to  it!" 

No,  the  Christian  experience  is  n't  any  of 
these  things  that  so  many  earnest  and  reflective 
youth  have  imagined  it  to  be.  Many  of  these 
things  are  effects  of  it,  but  none  of  them  must  be 
identified  with  it.  I  have  been  at  some  pains  in 
this  chapter,  in  trying  not  to  give  you,  so  far  as  I 
could  help  it,  any  one  of  the  many  philosophies 
of  Christianity.  Of  course,  no  one  can  talk  about 
religion  at  all  without  implying  some  definite 

111 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

view  of  men  and  the  world  which  lies  behind  it. 
But  I  have  avoided  the  theological  terminology, 
and    those    many    and    contrasting    intellectual 
statements  of  the  faith  by  which  each  age  has 
fitted  it  into  its  own  view  of  the  world.     And  I 
have  also  tried  to  speak  of  Christianity  in  the 
terms  of  the  principles  of  action,  rather  than  in 
those  of  specific  conduct.     For  here,  again,  con- 
duct will  change  from  generation  to  generation, 
and  the  sort  of  life  which  expresses  Christianity 
in  one  age  is  quite  unlike  the  sort  of  life  which 
will  express  it  in  another.     I  have  been  trying 
to  give  you  the  thing  which  lies  beneath  the 
theologies,  which  creates  the  philosophies,  which 
finds    its    expression    in    conduct,    namely,    the 
experience  of  God  in  Christ.     It  is  out  of  this 
mighty  experience  and  the  power  of  it  that  a  new 
type  of  life  issues,  and  that  new  type  is  Chris- 
tianity.    For  the  first  thing  we  ought  to  under- 
stand about  our  faith  is  this:    it  is  n't  a  form 
of  ideas,  and  it  is  n't  a  form  of  words,  and  it  is 
n't  a  rite.     It  's  a  power,  a  mighty,  spiritual 
force,  sweeping  down  through  the  centuries  in 
much  the  same  way  that  the  Gulf  Stream  sweeps 
through  the  Atlantic  Ocean,   carrying  warmth 
and  life   and  healing   wherever   it   goes.     That 
power  is  born  of  the  incontestable  fact  of  experi- 
ence, that,  in  Jesus,  men  have  it  certified  to  them 

112 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

that  there  is  a  God,  even  as  their  minds  have 
foreseen  and  their  hearts  have  desired;  and  that 
this  God  is  such  an  One  as  was  Jesus  Himself. 

Let  me  sum  up  briefly  what  we  have  been 
saying.  The  Christian  faith  issues  out  of  the 
common  background  of  our  race,  the  sense  of  a 
holy  God  and  a  sinful  world  placed  over  against 
each  other,  as  if  they  were  separated.  The  sinful 
world,  down  through  countless  generations,  has 
been  afraid.  It  has  thought  that  God  was  apart 
from  it,  had  no  care  for  it,  was  angry  with  it.  It 
has  tried  to  placate  Him  and  bribe  Him.  It  has 
given  its  firstborn  for  its  transgressions,  the  fruit 
of  its  body  for  the  sin  of  its  soul.  And  then  came 
Jesus.  And  the  Christian  message  consists  in 
his  announcement  of  the  kind  of  a  being  God  is, 
and  what  such  a  God  means  to  this  kind  of  a 
world.  God  loves  the  world,  and  bears  it  on  his 
heart.  Our  sin  has  not  extinguished  or  dimmed 
the  divine  affection,  but  determined  the  form 
which  that  affection  takes.  The  holy  Being, 
who  loves  a  sinful  world,  must  desire  to  deliver 
it  from  its  sin,  since  in  no  other  way  can  He  bless 
it,  or  have  it  for  his  own.  Therefore,  the  passion 
to  save  is  the  characteristic  expression  of  the  love 
of  the  living  God  for  mortal  men. 

We  come,  at  last,  to  the  third  and  final  thing 
which  we  want  to  say.     Just  what  is  this  experi- 

113 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

ence  of  salvation  which  the  Church  in  every  age 
has  taught?  What  is  it  that  really  happens  to 
us;  and  does  the  same  thing  happen  to  all  men, 
when  we  actually  believe  in  the  God  of  Jesus  and 
relinquish  ourself  to  Him?  Here  is  a  helpless, 
ignorant,  sinful  man.  Now,  what  occurs  in  him, 
when,  through  Jesus,  or  for  Jesus'  sake,  he  re- 
turns to  God?  Always,  in  men's  experience, 
three  things.  The  first  thing  that  he  finds  has 
happened  to  him  is  that  he  is  come  into  a  new 
relation,  both  to  God  and  to  his  fellow  men.  He 
is  brought  out  of  his  loneliness;  he  no  longer  has 
that  sense  of  estrangement  from  God  and  of 
isolation  from  other  human  beings.  The  feeling 
of  being  shut  up,  within  and  to  himself,  vanishes. 
He  is  n't  afraid  any  more;  hence  his  powers  are 
liberated,  and  he  feels  free,  and  can  be  himself 
again  in  the  sight  of  men,  in  the  open  day.  His 
shame  is  wiped  away.  He  feels  right  once  more 
and  as  if  he  had  come  to  himself  after  a  bad 
dream.  For  the  moment  he  makes  up  his  mind, 
on  the  strength  of  the  testimony  and  the  person 
of  Jesus,  to  believe,  and  take  the  leap  in  the  dark, 
and  give  up  his  will  to  this  wonderful  divine  will, 
then  he  has  the  unspeakably  precious  gift  of 
divine  forgiveness.  The  guilt  and  the  power  of 
his  previous  wrongdoing  have  vanished.  His 
surrender  makes  him  one  with  God;  therefore, 

114 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

there  flows  into  his  hfe  a  great  tide  of  joy  and  free- 
dom and  peace.  The  man  has  come  home,  and 
he  feels  himself  at  home  in  God's  world  and  with 
every  other  human  being.  Then,  next,  out  of 
these  new  relations,  and  the  new  motives  and 
powers  which  they  create,  he  gets  a  new  char- 
acter; he  becomes  a  different  kind  of  person.  A 
great  accession  of  moral  energy  is  the  result  of 
this  normal  relationship  with  God  and  men. 
His  personal  and  intimate  touch  with  the  living 
Spirit  composes  and  heals  his  life,  and  makes  it 
pure  and  simple  and  natural  again.  So  little  by 
little,  old  habits,  ancient  lusts,  worldly  and  rest- 
less activities,  are  crowded  out  by  the  new  life 
that  is  welling  up  within  him.  And,  finally, 
these  new  relationships  which  issue  in  a  new 
character,  make  him  believe  in  a  new  destiny. 
They  bring  him  in  touch,  so  to  speak,  with  an- 
other world  than  this,  a  world  that  does  not  fade, 
and  does  not  change,  the  world  that  always  is. 
For  he  has  a  very  clear  conviction  that  all  that 
is  happening  to  him  now  has  little  to  do  with  his 
body  or  his  mortality.  It  is  n't  a  physical  and 
material  experience;  it  is  moral  and  spiritual 
experience  which  is  now  transforming  him.  It 
is  his  self,  his  soul,  as  we  say,  that  has  been  taken 
out  of  darkness  and  the  prison  house,  and  set  free, 
like  a  joyous  bird,  in  an  infinite  and  untrammeled 

115 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

world.  So  the  man  begins  to  believe  that  since 
he  has  found  God,  and  a  moral  and  spiritual  life 
in  God,  he  can  no  more  die  than  God  can  die, 
and  that,  in  so  far  as  he  wins  to  moral  and 
spiritual  values,  he  wins  to  things  that  are  of 
eternal  worth.     This,  I  take  it,  is  salvation. 

How  glorious  a  thing,  then,  is  religion!  How 
infinitely  greater  it  is  than  any  of  its  social  or 
personal  manifestations !  Never  again  confound 
religion  with  mere  amiable  living  or  mechanical 
believing.  Never  identify  it  with  even  the  most 
beneficent  of  its  social  activities.  Never  think 
of  it  as  being  concerned  only,  or  chiefly,  with  the 
issues  of  this  present  life.  Religion  maintains 
itself  in  perennial  power,  because  men  have  never 
been  willing  to  believe  that  they  belonged  only 
to  this  present  life,  and  have  never  been  able  to 
satisfy  themselves  with  anything  or  everything 
which  this  life  has  to  give.  For  always,  when 
men  have  looked  abroad  upon  their  world,  they 
have  seen  the  inextricable  mingling  of  good  and 
evil,  the  mystery  of  its  strife  and  pain  and 
injustice.  And  always,  when  they  have  looked 
within,  upon  themselves,  they  have  faced  the 
inexpressible  sorrow  and  loneliness  of  human 
hfe.  Thereby  they  have  been  forced  to  concern 
themselves  with  the  solemn  questions  which 
have  to  do  with  the  origin  and  the  meaning 

116 


RELIGIOUS  INSTINCT 

and  the  destiny  of  the  race.  Where  did  we  all 
come  from?  Did  we  come  from  anything?  What 
are  we  here  for?  Where  are  we  all  going?  Is 
there  anything  after  this  life  which  can  possibly 
compensate  for  it?  If  a  man  die,  shall  he  live 
again?  And  the  Christian  experience  has  a 
triumphant  answer  to  these  questions.  Jesus 
and  his  followers  say,  "We  know  from  whence 
we  came.  We  came  out  from  an  Eternal  Life, 
a  loving  and  a  gracious  Spirit.  And  we  know 
where  we  are  going.  We  shall  return  to  that 
from  which,  in  the  beginning,  we  came.  In  God 
we  live,  and  move  and  have  our  being.  In  God 
w^e  now  exist,  and  we  shall  exist,  forever  and 
forever." 

This  is  only  words  to  you.  No  one  of  you 
can  possibly  know  now,  what  it  means.  But 
such  a  conviction  represents  the  sublime  effort, 
the  supreme  achievement  of  the  human  race. 
Toward  that  conviction  may  you  live! 


v/ 


CHAPTER  V 

THE    EXCEEDING    DIFFICULTIES    OF     BELIEF 

We  tried  to  describe  to  you,  in  the  last  chapter, 
what  the  Christian  experience  is.  We  saw  that 
our  human  race  is  incurably  religious;  that 
nearly  all  men  and  women,  in  all  times  and 
places,  have  had  a  sense  of  the  unknown,  a  hunger 
for  God,  a  feeling  that  they  were  moving  about 
in  worlds  not  realized.  We  saw,  too,  that  accom- 
panying this  intuitive  awareness  of  the  Divine 
was  the  sense  of  baflflement  and  perplexity  and 
uneasiness.  Men  wanted  God,  but  could  n't 
get  at  Him;  and  they  were  more  or  less  afraid 
and  felt  themselves  guilty  in  his  presence.  The 
sacred  writings  of  the  world,  the  beautiful 
mythologies  of  Greece  and  Rome,  the  poetry, 
the  drama,  even  the  fiction  of  our  race  —  all 
these  bear  an  abundant  and  impressive  witness 
to  the  life  of  God  struggling  to  find  an  expression 
in  the  soul  of  man,  and  to  man  desiring,  yet 
fearing,  this  life,  and  apparently  unable  to  dis- 
cover and  appropriate  it  unaided. 

On  the  basis  of  this  widespread  instinct  rests 
the  Christian  faith.  It  gives  to  that  instinct  a 
specific   sanction   and   a  unique   content.     The 

118 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

good  news  of  Jesus  is  that  there  is  a  creative 
Spirit  pervading  all  the  world,  manifesting  Him- 
self in  everything  we  see  and  know  and  think  and 
do;  closer  to  us  than  our  breathing,  nearer  to  us 
than  hands  and  feet;  and  that  He  is  a  loving 
and  a  gracious  Spirit,  having  compassion  for  the 
children  of  men,  assuring  them  that  He  hath 
made  no  barriers  between  their  spirits  and  his; 
determined  to  serve  them  all  to  the  uttermost. 
He  gives  his  love  to  men  according  to  their  need, 
not  according  to  their  desert.  He  is  more  willing 
to  hear  than  we  to  pray.  He  hath  prepared  for 
them  that  love  Him  such  things  as  pass  man's 
understanding.  All  that  we  have  to  do,  in  order 
to  know  and  live  with  this  gracious  Spirit,  is  to 
believe  in  Him,  open  our  lives  to  his  influence, 
accept  the  forgiveness  which  He  offers,  and, 
loving  our  fellow  men  in  the  same  way  that  God 
loves  us,  thus  become  citizens  of  the  heavenly 
Kingdom.  The  reality  of  this  loving,  gracious, 
sacrificial  Spirit  is  certified  to  us  in  Jesus.  Jesus 
lived  the  thing  He  talked  about.  He  was  what 
He  revealed.  Men  would  never  have  dared  to 
beheve  in  a  God  like  this  if  they  had  not  seen 
Him  made  manifest  in  the  flesh,  in  Jesus  the 
Galilean.  Hence  men,  for  Jesus'  sake,  because 
of  Jesus,  trusting  in  Him,  have  said,  "I  believe 
it;   I  do  beheve  there  is  a  holy,  potent,  gracious 

119 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

Spirit,  and  that  my  spirit  belongs  to  Him.  I  do 
believe,  since  Jesus  said  so,  and  died  to  prove  it, 
that  the  Father  will  forgive  me  all  my  wrong- 
doing if  I  will  only  come  to  Him.  And  so  I  am 
going  to  come."  And  then  we  saw  that,  when 
men  do  thus  accept  the  Christian  Gospel  on 
faith,  they  are  able  to  prove  it  is  true  in  their  own 
experience  by  the  marvelous  things  which  it  does 
to  them.  For  it  gives  them  a  new  relationship, 
both  to  God  and  men.  It  brings  them  out  of  the 
feeling  of  loneliness,  out  of  the  sense  of  fear  and 
shame.  There  is  n't  any  experience  any  more 
of  being  apart  from  God  or  men.  On  the  con- 
trary, we  know  we  are  with  Him,  and  we  listen 
for  his  voice;  we  rest  in  his  power;  we  are 
subdued  and  composed  by  his  secret  presence. 
Also  it  happens  to  us  that  when  we  thus  believe, 
we  attain  to  a  nobler  and  a  truer  disposition. 
Faith  makes  a  new  man  of  us.  There  are  new 
forms  of  self-expression  and  new  motives.  Ap- 
parently the  old  channels  in  the  brain  are  wiped 
out,  for  ancient  lusts  and  base  inclinations  dis- 
appear. Generous  and  noble  desires  take  their 
place,  and  we  find  ourselves  living  unselfish  and 
honorable  lives.  And,  finally,  this  also  happens 
to  us.  The  whole  experience  of  this  new  nature 
is  in  the  field  of  the  spirit;  and  it  gives  us  the 
consciousness  of  a  new  destiny.     Its  values  are 

120 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

moral;  and  they  so  intimately  ally  us  with  what 
we  think  God  is  that  we  expect  to  go  on  in  this 
free,  unselfish,  joyous  life  forever. 

These  are  the  marvelous  things  that  happen 
in  human  lives,  when,  by  this  active  belief  in 
Jesus  and  the  God  of  Jesus,  men  come  into 
contact  with  that  new  power  which  we  call 
Christianity.  These  things  prove  the  reality 
and  the  validity  of  the  Christian  faith.  They 
give  the  only  proof  of  which  it  is  capable,  the 
verification  by  experience. 

Now  this  is,  as  I  see  it,  what  it  means  to  be  a 
Christian.  Most  of  us  who  read  these  words  are 
already  predisposed  to  accept  all  that  the  term 
"Christian"  implies.  Our  inheritance  and  en- 
vironment and  training,  all  push  us  that  way. 
Our  very  youth,  with  its  mystic  intuitions,  which 
middle  age  loses  and  forgets,  urges  us  to  a  high 
venture  of  faith.  And  yet  hundreds  of  us  go 
through  college  and  lose  our  religion  while  we 
are  there,  and  many  and  many  an  educated  man 
wants  to  believe,  but  cannot.  Can  we,  then,  in 
these  pages,  get  at  any  of  the  reasons  why  good 
men  and  true,  naturally  high-minded  and  spiritu- 
ally sensitive  men,  find  it  difficult  to  say,  with 
intellectual  integrity  and  moral  candor,  "I  am  a 
Christian".? 

I  think  those  reasons  can  be  grouped  under 
121 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

four  heads.  First  of  all,  it  is  not  surprising  that 
many  undergraduates  lose  their  religion,  for  such 
faith  as  this  makes  a  supreme  demand  upon  both 
the  will  and  the  belief  of  the  individual.  It  may 
justly  be  said  to  tax  his  credulity  to  the  utmost. 
This  assumption  that  there  is  a  God,  and  that 
that  God  is  love,  that  the  underlying  principle 
of  the  universe  is  sacrificial  service,  and  that 
through  this  service  men  come  into  their  real 
and  satisfying  self-expression  —  this  is  an  enor- 
«mous  assumption.  There  is  a  great  deal  in 
human  nature  which  appears  to  go  directly  con- 
trary to  it,  and  men  instinctively  dislike  to 
believe  it.  Over  against  Jesus'  statement  that 
God  is  love,  there  stands  another  world-wide 
assumption,  one  which  is  much  more  native  to 
the  untutored  human  spirit  and  much  more 
easily  verifiable  —  the  assumption  that  God,  if 
there  be  a  God,  is  force,  is  brute  strength;  that 
might  is  the  only  right.  There  are  men  who 
simply  cannot  accept  the  ultimate  reality  of  this 
religious  hypothesis  of  ours.  They  assert  that 
the  natural  self-expressions  and  the  durable  satis- 
factions of  life  are  to  be  found,  not  in  the  terms 
of  service  and  sacrifice  and  love,  but  in  the  terms 
of  self-will  and  material  power.  We  are  here  to 
learn  how  to  dominate  our  present  world.  That 
world  is  as  a  great  arena,  strewn  with  the  wrecks 

122 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

and  debris  of  the  ages,  on  whose  torn  and  bloody 
sands  each  generation  wages  its  own  ruthless  war. 
Soon  our  turn  will  come  to  struggle  in  that  arena 
for  the  satisfaction  of  our  desires  and  for  our 
personal  prestige.  And  in  that  struggle  it  must 
be  each  man  for  himself  and  the  devil  take  the 
hindmost.  Neitzsche  is  right.  Power  and  domi- 
nation are  the  goals  of  life.  The  strong  man 
stands  above  the  law,  while  he  makes  it  for  those 
beneath.  A  man,  if  he  be  a  man,  wherever  he 
has  the  chance  to  consult  his  own  will,  takes  it, 
and  gratifies  his  will  to  the  full.  All  this  talk 
about  service  and  sacrifice  and  stewardship, 
and  about  democracy  and  brotherhood,  is  the 
cant  of  the  weakling,  the  sentimentalist,  and  the 
slave.  Bismarck  is  our  man.  It  's  blood  and 
iron,  not  love,  which  makes  a  man  a  conqueror. 
There  is  very  much  in  our  world  to  support 
this  doctrine,  which  is  the  very  antithesis  of 
Christianity.  On  this  view  are  founded  all  the 
ancient  empires.  It  governs  the  politics  of  Asia 
and  of  Europe  to  this  day.  This  was  the  faith  of 
imperial  Rome,  the  creed  of  Napoleon,  and  of  the 
robber  barons  of  the  Rhine.  This,  too,  is  the  creed 
of  most  American  as  well  as  European  life.  In  di- 
plomacy, in  all  sorts  of  commercial,  international 
relationships,  might  is  right,  grab  what  you  can; 
the  strong  man  dominates,  and  social  service, 

123 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

and  justice    for    the    weaker    nations,  are    just 
foolish  fictions.     The  strifes  which,  for  the  last 
two  years,  have  convulsed  and  devastated  the 
Balkan  States,  offer  a  grim  commentary  upon 
the  ascendancy  of  this  principle  of  life,  as  much 
among  the  so-called  Christian  as  among  the  Mo- 
hammedan peoples.     This  is  the  creed  of  our  so- 
cial world.     The  over-wealthy  and  the  insolently 
w^orldly  think  that  there  is  one  code  of  ethics  for 
them  and  another  for  the  common  man,  and  that, 
having  money,   which  is  power,   they  may  do 
about    as    they    please.     Hence    their    speeding 
vehicles  crush  the  unwary,  and  their  domestic 
scandals  furnish  the  salacious  amusement  of  the 
proletariat.     This  is  the  creed  of  much  of  our 
business    world.      Wherever    men    get   together 
huge  aggregations  of  capital  for  private  enrich- 
ment, and  then  proceed  by  unsocial  and  unjust 
methods  to  heartlessly  push  their  weaker  breth- 
ren to  the  wall,  they  thereby  scoff  at  Jesus,  and 
at  his  religion,  and  bow  to  Mammon  and  the  flesh. 
This  is  the  creed  of  the  greater  part  of  our  social 
and  industrial  order.     The  feud  between  capital 
and   labor   is   an   economic   feud,    inexpressibly 
brutal,  and  wholly  unmoral  in  its  recognition 
only  of  self  and  might.     The  ruthless  corpora- 
tion exploits  the  bodies  and  souls  of  its  employees, 
often  determines  their  wages  by  their  hunger, 

124 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

and  eases  its  own  conscience  and  placates  the 
community  by  the  endowment,  through  its 
inhumanly  gotten  gains,  of  hospitals  and  col- 
leges and  churches.  The  laborer,  in  savage  fury, 
strikes  back,  threatens  the  persons  and  the 
property  of  those  above  him,  brings  the  bludgeon 
of  the  picket  down  upon  the  head  of  the  scab, 
organizes  a  world-wide  anarchy,  irresponsible, 
futile,  dangerous.  It  is  all  infinitely  far  removed 
from  the  person  and  teaching  of  Jesus.  There 
are  few  indications  of  brotherhood  or  adequate 
sense  of  social  responsibility  in  our  industrial 
world.  The  old  economy,  that  might  is  right, 
rules  in  both  camps.  And,  again,  this  is  the 
creed  of  much  of  our  political  life.  Men  use  the 
stewardship  of  large  funds  for  private  gain. 
They  use  public  oflSce  for  personal  aggrandize- 
ment, ruthlessly  exploit  the  vast  natural  re- 
sources of  the  nation,  lay  heavy  burdens  of  debt 
upon  the  shoulders  of  the  coming  generation, 
and  consider  that  their  opportunity  is  their 
sufficient  justification. 

Our  world,  in  short,  is  not  a  Christian  world. 
It  would  be  transparent  folly  to  so  regard  it,  and 
most  men  don't  believe  in  the  Christian  spirit. 
Ours  is  a  fairly  brutal,  quite  ruthless  civilization, 
where  nearly  every  man  is  out  for  the  goods; 
where  we  want  money,  and  we  want  power,  and 

125 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

we  want  fame  and  ease  and  luxury,  and  we  don't 
much  care  how  we  get  them,  if  only  they  are 
ours.  Moving  over  the  face  of  this  materialistic 
and  imperial  civilization  is  the  Spirit  of  Jesus,  and 
on  the  whole  He  is  making  it  kindlier  and  more 
decent  with  each  succeeding  generation.  But 
the  first  great  shock  which  comes  to  the  young 
man  who  has  merely  accepted  Christianity  as  a 
matter  of  course,  and  has  regarded  it  as  being 
actively  and  widely  operative  in  modern  society, 
is  to  find  out  what  Christianity  really  is,  how 
little  of  it,  at  any  time,  there  has  been  in  the 
world,  and  how  comparatively  little  there  is  now. 
The  world  does  n't  believe  in  it,  and  Jesus  was 
perfectly  right  when  He  said  that  you  will  have 
to  set  your  face  against  the  world  if  you  do. 

And  yet  I  would  bid  you  remember  that  for 
all  this  Christian  faith  is  so  sublimely  unpractical, 
so  difficult  and  audacious,  and  although  it  has 
made  so  little  headway  in  two  thousand  years, 
nevertheless  the  best  things  in  our  contemporary 
life  are  those  which  are  the  embodiments  of  it. 
The  foundation  of  our  present  civilization  is  the 
home,  and  every  decent  home  you  ever  saw  is 
built,  not  upon  the  imperial  principle  of  might 
and  self-will,  but  upon  the  Christian  principle  of 
service  and  sacrifice  and  love.  Christianity 
produced  what  the  child  to-day  calls  "father" 

126 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

and  "mother."  Christianity  has  made  child  Hfe 
free  and  joyous.  Again,  the  best  things  of  the 
modern  state  are  direct  expressions  of  tlie 
Christian  principle,  and  they  show  that  principle 
to  be  extraordinarily  potent  and  beneficent  in 
action.)  The  hospital,  which  replaces  the  casting- 
out  of  the  sick  and  the  infirm;  the  reformatory, 
which  is  replacing  the  prison;  the  old-age  pen- 
sions, the  child-labor  laws  and  the  minimum- 
wage  laws;  the  determined  attacks  upon  the 
drink  traflSc  and  the  sex  traffic;  the  economic 
and  political  independence  which  the  community 
is  about  to  grant  to  women,  —  all  these  are 
directly  contrary  to  the  old  imperial  principle. 
They  are  all  products  of  Jesus'  concept  of  God 
as  incarnate  love,  and  of  the  law  of  life  as  the 
law  of  justice  and  unselfish  service.  I  grant 
you,  therefore,  that  it  is  hard  to  believe  in  the 
Christian  view  of  the  world;  for  the  world  does  n't 
naturally  take  to  it,  and  most  of  the  expres- 
sions of  our  civilization  flout  and  deny  it.  Yet  I 
would  remind  you  that  it  is  worth  while  to  face 
this  difficult  Christian  principle  seriously,  and 
courageously  to  try  to  achieve  belief  in  it.  For 
it  is  certainly  true  that  wherever  men  have  really 
given  Christianity  a  chance  and  have  actually 
lived  it,  either  as  individuals  or  as  groups,  it 
has  transformed  the  face  of  human  nature,  and 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

made  the  wilderness  to  blossom  as  the  rose, 
and  brought  back  hope  and  courage,  freedom 
and  joy,  and  the  voice  of  praise  into  our  sorrow- 
ful human  life. 

The  second  reason,  I  think,  why  men  are  apt 
to  lose  their  faith  is  that  there  is  so  much  in  the 
make-up  of  human  life  itself,  and  in  the  nature 
of  the  universe,  its  laws  and  operations,  as  we 
see  them,  which  appears  to  be  directly  contrary 
to  what  we  think  we  have  a  right  to  expect  if 
it  is  true  that  there  really  is  a  God,  and  that  He 
is  a  God  of  justice  and  of  grace  and  of  love. 
Human  life  is  full  of  sorrow,  full  of  injustice,  full 
of  pain  and  withheld  completion.  Pure  hopes 
are  being  blasted  every  day,  and  high  ambitions 
being  denied,  and  fine  spirits  withered.  More 
often  the  wrong  than  the  right  wins  the  cause. 
The  beautiful  and  the  noble  are  cut  off  in  their 
youth;  the  vicious  and  the  useless  live  on  to  old 
age.  Children  suffer;  women  weep.  The  inno- 
cent are  sacrificed;  the  guilty  go  free.  Nature 
knows  no  compassion  and  makes  no  discrimina- 
tions. Like  one  vast  and  ruthless  machine,  the 
universe  appears  to  go  grinding  on;  and  vice  and 
virtue,  aspiration  and  despair,  seem  to  have  no 
significance  to  any  thing  or  any  one  except  our- 
selves. How  can  any  man  who  sees  clearly  the 
inscrutable  injustice,  the  undeserved  failures,  the 

128 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

unmerited  sorrows  of  human  existence,  believe 
that  behind  it  all,  and  dominating  it,  is  a  good 
and  gracious  and  intelligent  Spirit?  .  The  belief 
of  primitive  races  in  evil  spirits  seems  to  us 
intelligible  enough.  But  can  we,  who  know  the 
world  as  it  is,  accept  this  concept  of  a  holy  and 
a  loving  God? 

We  must  answer,  frankly,  that  to  believe  in 
Jesus'  God  and  Jesus'  faith,  in  the  face  of  much 
that  we  know  of  human  life  and  of  universal 
workings,  is  a  great  achievement.  It  is  difficult; 
it  takes  a  high  vision,  or  a  sublime  madness,  as 
you  may  choose  to  call  it.  The  difficulties  of 
belief  are  enormous.  There  are  times  when  to 
every  one  of  us  they  seem  to  be  insuperable. 
Yet,  I  candidly  believe  that  the  difficulties  of 
unbelief  are  yet  greater.  Christianity  rests,  as 
all  the  important  affirmations  in  human  life  rest, 
back  on  an  hypothesis.  You  cannot  prove  it, 
as  you  can  prove  an  empirical  fact,  nor  demon- 
strate it,  as  you  can  demonstrate  a  mathe- 
matical problem.  We  just  assume  that  God 
is,  and  that  He  is  this  kind  of  God,  and  that, 
therefore,  everything  in  his  universe  must  eventu- 
ally work  out  right.  We  assume  that  in  the  end 
He  and  we  shall  see  of  the  travail  of  the  soul  and 
be  satisfied.  And  this  is  what  we  mean  by  the 
word  "faith,"  and  by  the  insistance  that  faith 

129 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

IS  indispensable  to  any  real  religion.  But  you 
are  to  remember  that  every  view  of  the  world 
rests  back  on  faith;  that  Christianity  is  n't  the 
only  thing  we  have  to  take  on  trust.  Every 
fundamental  assumption  in  life  is  taken  that  way. 
We  believe  in  the  validity  of  human  knowledge, 
but  the  belief  is  a  pure  assumption.  We  cannot 
prove  it.  We  just  trust  that  things  are  as  they 
appear  to  be,  and  that  trust  would  seem  to  be 
justified  by  the  results  that  follow  from  our  faith 
and  by  our  increasing  power  to  master  the 
natural  world.  But  we  approach  all  phenomena 
of  nature,  taking  for  granted  our  fundamental 
assumptions  regarding  them,  all  of  which  are 
beyond  any  possible  verification. 

Now,  the  same  thing  is  true  in  the  realm  of 
religion.  No  man  should  be  condemned  or 
scoffed  at  because  he  assumes  a  mindless  order, 
a  dead  world  of  atoms  or  electrons,  a  mechanical 
universe,  in  which  you  and  I  are  the  product  of 
chance  combinations,  in  which  our  aspirations 
and  visions  and  faiths  are  mere  tricks  of  the  mind, 
curious  actions  and  reactions  of  the  chemistry  of 
our  natures.  No  man  can  prove  that  material- 
istic view.  Its  disciple  holds  it  in  precisely  the 
same  way  that  you  hold  your  religious  view. 
He  takes  it  on  faith.  Such  a  view  of  the  world, 
it  may  justly  be  said,   transcends  reason,   al- 

130 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

though  to  the  man  who  accepts  it,  it  does  not 
appear  to  go  contrary  to  reason.  And  the  only 
thing  which  Christianity  asks  of  you  is  this: 
Since  you  have  got  to  live  by  faith,  anyway,  it 
asks  you  to  have  faith  in  its  view  of  the  world. 
We  cannot  prove  that  view,  neither  can  our 
opponents  prove  theirs.  Belief  in  the  Christian 
God  is  a  leap  in  the  dark.  But  all  the  funda- 
mental assumptions,  upon  which  the  entire 
structure  of  human  life  is  built,  are  also  leaps  in 
the  dark.  There  is  much  in  human  life  which 
appears  to  refute  our  faith.  But  there  is  also 
much  in  human  life  which  appears  triumphantly 
to  justify  it.  How  are  we  to  explain  the  saints 
and  the  prophets,  the  reformers  and  the  heroes  of 
the  world,  the  noble  army  of  martyrs,  the  men 
who  have  laid  down  their  lives  for  an  idea,  and 
given  up  their  breath  for  love.^^  How  can  we 
explain  the  obstinate  questionings,  the  persistent 
visions,  the  moral  strife  and  agony  of  the  world, 
the  insatiable  spiritual  hunger,  except  on  our 
hypothesis.f^  Most  of  all,  how  are  we  to  explain 
Jesus,  and  the  serene  power,  the  moral  splendor 
of  his  life?  And  so,  we  call  the  chessboard  black, 
we  call  it  white.  There  is  as  much  reason  on 
a  'priori  grounds  for  having  faith  in  God  as  for 
not  having  faith  in  Him.  More  than  that,  when 
you  consider  the  quality   and  potency  of  the 

131 


THE   COLLEGE  COURSE 

human  life  that  has  accepted  our  hypothesis  and 
achieved  our  faith,  we  think  there  is,  on  the 
whole,  more  ground  for  believing  than  for  not 
believing,  and  that  the  men  who  see  life  clearly 
and  see  it  whole,  torn  as  they  are  by  its  strifes 
and  sorrows,  yet  find  the  difficulties  of  belief  less 
than  the  difficulties  of  unbelief.  Most  of  all,  we 
say,  you  shall  know  our  faith  by  its  fruits  if  you 
will  but  try  it.  How  does  it  work  out?  And  we 
think  it  has  been  incontestably  proved,  in  the 
history  of  the  races  dealing  with  Christianity, 
that  they  who  do  sincerely  and  faithfully  believe 
in  Jesus  and  his  God  live  happier  and  freer  and 
fuller  lives,  are  more  able  to  express  their  real 
selves,  find  the  durable  satisfactions  of  human 
experience,  are  of  larger  service  to  the  race,  have 
power  in  the  present,  and  peace  as  they  look  into 
the  future.  So  that  here,  verification  by  experi- 
ence justifies  faith  in  the  Christian  view,  in  spite 
of  its  profound  and  abiding  difficulties. 

And  never  forget  what  faith  is.  Faith  is  n't 
believing  in  things  you  know  are  n't  so.  Faith 
is  not  going  contrary  to  one's  reason,  deliberately 
stultifying  or  ignoring  the  workings  of  the  intel- 
lect. Faith  is  a  sober  and  candid  acceptance  of 
a  fundamental  proposition  which,  indeed,  is  not 
demonstrable,  which  transcends  the  reasoning 
process,  or,  if  you  please,  goes  beyond  the  bounds 

132 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

of  knowledge,  but  does  not  go  contrary  to  known 
things.  And  faith  is  the  common  practice,  the 
inevitable  condition  of  all  human  life.  It  is  as 
much  a  condition  of  action  as  the  concepts  of 
space  and  time  are  conditions  of  thinking.  The 
difference  between  the  Christian  and  the  non- 
Christian  is  not  the  difference  between  the  man 
who  is  weakly  credulous  and  the  man  who  holds 
his  mind  in  vigorous  and  skeptical  independence. 
It  is  purely  the  difference  between  two  sorts  of 
faith;  faith  in  an  ideal,  intelligent  world,  full  of 
beauty  and  truth  and  goodness,  and  faith  in  a 
mechanical,  mindless  order,  concerning  whose 
origin  we  have  no  theory  to  offer,  concerning 
whose  ultimate  destiny  we  know  nothing,  and 
from  which  we  may  not  hope  for  anything. 

The  third  reason  why  men  tend  to  lose  their 
faith,  in  college,  is  because  they  confound 
religion  and  theology  with  each  other.  When 
their  theology  undergoes  radical  transitions,  and 
they  have,  perhaps,  to  relinquish  very  much  of 
it,  they  think  that  their  religion  must  necessarily 
accompany  it,  and,  as  the  Germans,  in  their 
quaint  humor,  say,  they  "throw  out  the  baby 
with  the  bath."  Religion  is  an  experience  of 
the  inner  life.  It  is  our  own  personal  awareness 
of  God  and  self  and  sin;  our  own  actual  finding 
out,  that  when  through  Jesus  we  know  God  and 

133 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

come  to  Him,  sin  is  forgiven  and  we  are  set  free. 
That  is  n't  a  theory  or  a  philosophy  or  a  science. 
It  is  a  fact  in  human  Hfe,  which  generation  after 
generation  of  men  have  known  for  themselves. 
It  does  n't  admit  of  argument,  it  just  is.  Now, 
theology  takes  the  facts  of  the  religious  experi- 
ence and  codifies  and  relates  them,  puts  them  in 
logical  order,  gives  labels  to  them,  explains  their 
inferences,  and  fits  this  portion  of  our  experience 
into  the  whole  of  our  lives,  sets  these  facts  in 
their  right  perspective  and  place  in  any  given 
view  of  the  world.  Theology  has  the  same  rela- 
tion to  religion  that  botany  has  to  flowers  or  that 
physics  and  chemistry  have  to  the  material 
universe.  Theology,  then,  is  a  science,  of  which 
rehgion  is  the  corresponding  art.  Theology  is  a 
philosophy,  religion  the  life  which  furnishes  the 
material  for  that  philosophy.  Now,  the  life,  the 
experience,  the  art  of  religion,  are  essentially 
unchanging.  Where  they  change  at  all,  it  is 
very  slowly,  with  practically  imperceptible  modi- 
fications in  each  generation. 

But  the  science  of  religion  changes  markedly, 
as  in  each  succeeding  century  men  know  more 
and  more  of  themselves,  and  more  of  the  world 
in  which  they  live.  All  sciences  change  radically, 
unless  they  are  dead  sciences.  As  long  as  theol- 
ogy remains  vital  and  potent,  it  will  remain  fluid 

134 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

and  progressive.  Let  me  illustrate  this.  Al- 
ways there  have  been  the  suns  and  moons,  the 
stars  and  planets,  all  the  splendor  of  the  firma- 
ment by  night.  That's  an  incontestable  and 
unchanging  fact  of  our  material  world.  It  has 
always  been  a  part  of  man's  experience.  Now, 
we  used  to  have  a  science  of  that  firmament,  and 
a  quaint  and  picturesque  science  it  was.  It  was 
called  the  science  of  astrology,  and  to  it  we  owe 
the  sportive  signs  of  the  zodiac.  We  used  to 
believe  that  if  a  man  was  born  under  the  planet 
Venus,  he  was  an  affectionate  creature;  or  under 
Mars,  he  was  a  savage  brute;  or  under  Jupiter, 
he  was  a  headstrong  lad.  Now,  the  whole  science 
of  astrology  is  as  dead  as  dead  can  be.  It  was 
all  wrong.  There  was  nothing  in  it.  Nobody 
but  quacks  and  old  women  and  some  business 
men  believe  in  it.  But  the  firmament  still 
remains.  And  now  we  have  a  new  science  of 
astronomy,  and  that,  too,  has  been  undergoing 
an  important  modification  in  the  last  fifty  years, 
and  its  leaders  are  now  engaged  in  certain  ardent 
and  most  interesting  controversies.  In  a  sense, 
indeed,  it  is  true  that  the  sciences  are  always 
changing  because  the  facts  have  always  been 
there,  and  the  changes  themselves  indicate  that 
the  facts  are  permanent  and  real. 

Now,    precisely    the    same    thing    is    true   of 
135 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

religion  and  its  corresponding  science  of  theology. 
Down  through  two  thousand  years  men  have 
been  working  at  the  indubitable  and  transform- 
ing facts  of  the  Christian  experience.  They  have 
tried  to  state  those  facts  in  the  language  of  their 
own  generation.  They  have  spoken  of  them, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  their  own  day.  They 
have  related  them  to  the  view  of  the  world,  of 
their  time.  They  have  given  to  them  such 
varying  emphases  as  the  tendencies  and  needs 
of  any  given  generation  appeared  to  warrant. 
And,  meanwhile,  men's  views  of  the  world  have 
been  changing,  men's  chief  points  of  need  have 
somewhat  shifted,  men's  ideas  of  God  and  man 
have  enormously  enlarged  and  clarified.  And 
so,  of  course,  their  science  of  man's  experience 
of  God  and  of  himself  in  God  has  changed  and 
clarified,  too.  That  is  wholly  desirable  and  quite 
to  be  expected.  A  science  of  religion,  for  in- 
stance, which  presupposed  that  the  Ptolemaic 
conception  of  the  universe  would  be  radically 
different  from  a  science  which  presupposed  the 
Copernican  system;  or,  to  come  nearer  home,  a 
science  of  our  religion  built  upon  a  dualistic 
philosophy  would  be  quite  unlike  a  science  of 
that  religion  worked  out  when  most  men  are, 
consciously  or  instinctively,  monists. 

Therefore,  it  comes  about  that  when  you  go 
136 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

to  college  and  are  introduced  to  a  twentieth 
century  view  of  the  world,  and  find  that  many 
of  the  intellectual  expressions  of  your  religion 
are  couched  in  a  fifteenth  or  a  sixteenth  or  a 
seventeenth  or  eighteenth  century  view  of  the 
world,  then  those  intellectual  expressions  of 
religion  seem  to  you  unreal  and  inadequate,  and 
to  some  extent  they  undoubtedly  are.  But  that 
does  n't  mean  that  religion  is  unreal  or  fallacious 
or  outgrown.  It  only  means  that  you  need  to 
bring  your  science  of  religion  up  to  date.  Nor 
does  it  mean  —  and  this,  I  think,  it  is  particu- 
larly valuable  to  say  to  youth  —  that  all  the 
venerable  and  impressive  statements  of  faitli, 
although  they  are,  to  some  extent,  intellectually 
outgrown,  are  nevertheless  valueless.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  of  enormous  value,  both  as 
testimonies  to  the  faith  of  our  fathers  and  as 
milestones  marking  the  progress  of  the  race 
in  its  search  for  a  rational  and  intelligible  ex- 
pression of  spiritual  truth.  The  Declaration  of 
Independence  is  a  product,  partly  of  French 
sentimentalism,  and  partly  of  eighteenth-cen- 
tury political  science.  Few  of  us  believe  its 
opening  statement,  that  all  men  are  created 
equal.  None  of  us  would  want  to  take  that 
Declaration  as  a  political  creed  for  the  United 
States  of  this  century,  or  make  a  mechanical 

137 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

acceptance  of  it  the  test  of  political  orthodoxy. 
But  all  of  us  revere  and  love  it,  and  we  know  it 
is  a  great  asset  in  our  national  life.  We  should 
justly  protest  if  it  were  not  still  read  upon  each 
Fourth  of  July,  to  both  the  citizens  and  the 
children  of  this  Republic.  It  was  our  first  con- 
fession of  national  consciousness  and  faith;  and 
it  marked  the  beginning  of  a  mighty  era  in  the 
affairs  of  this  continent.  Now,  there  are  similar 
corporate  confessions  of  the  Christian  Church, 
notably  the  great  creeds  of  Christendom,  such 
as  the  Athanasian,  the  Nicsean,  the  Apostles' 
Creed,  so-called.  They  are  witnesses  to  the 
vigorous  and  potent  religious  life  of  our  distant 
forbears.  They  mark  mighty  and  significant 
advances  in  intellectual  apprehension  of  religious 
truth.  There  were  platforms,  intellectual  bonds 
of  union,  spiritual  confessions,  which  held  to- 
gether the  Republic  of  God,  and  under  their  ban- 
ners it  fought  gloriously  against  the  world,  the 
flesh,  and  the  devil.  They  have  conserved  and 
transmitted,  from  generation  to  generation,  some 
of  the  most  precious  experiences  of  our  human 
race.  Therefore,  we  love  to  hear  them  read,  or 
we  love  reverently  to  recite  them,  for  just  the 
same  reasons  that  we  love  to  hear  the  Declaration 
of  Independence  read.  They  are  not  mechanical 
tests  of  our  intellectual  apprehension  of  truth. 

138 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

As  scientific  documents  they  do,  indeed,  appear 
to  us  to  be  extraordinarily  able,  having  clear  and 
amazing  insights  into  the  nature  of  God  and  the 
needs  of  humanity.  Yet,  of  course,  they  are 
mistaken,  and,  of  course,  they  are  deficient,  in 
part;  for  they  come  from  somewhere  about 
the  third  century,  and  we  are  the  children  of 
the  twentieth  century,  and,  mighty  as  were  the 
minds  who  conceived  those  subtle,  pregnant 
phrases,  even  they  could  not  project  themselves 
seventeen  centuries  beyond  their  time.  We  are, 
therefore,  able  to  honor  such  creeds  without 
mechanically  accepting  them,  and,  indeed,  we 
believe  that  we  are  true  to  the  intellectual  power, 
the  spiritual  daring  of  their  framers,  when  we 
push  on  beyond  them,  rather  than  cling  to  them. 
And  so  you  will  find  it  true  of  much  of  your 
inherited  science  of  religion,  that  it  will  need 
large  modifications  and  restatements.  Some 
things  you  will  add  to  it,  other  things  you  will 
drop  from  it,  as  your  view  of  doctrines  changes, 
as  this  age  makes  its  own  statement  of  what  it 
believes  to  be  the  nature  of  God  and  man  and 
Christ  and  their  relations  one  to  another.  But 
do  not  let  this  readjustment  of  your  intellectual 
apprehension  of  religious  truth  dim  the  sense  of 
the  reality  of  that  experience  to  which  all  this 
science  is  but  the  witness  and  of  which  it  is  but 

139 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

the  expression.  There  is  a  ponderous  and  an- 
tique phrase,  I  think  it  is  TertulHan's,  which  sums 
up  the  whole  principle:  "Mutation  of  emphasis," 
he  says,  "involves  no  invasion  of  substance." 

Never  permit  yourselves,  then,  to  suppose  that 
you  need  to  cease  to  be  a  Christian  because  your 
inherited  dogmas,  the  traditional  formulae  of 
Christianity,  are  no  longer  entirely  acceptable. 
Only  discard  them  w^hen,  in  so  doing,  you  gain 
the  freedom  to  come  nearer  to,  and  learn  more 
of,  the  spiritual  things  of  life.  Still  retain  and 
cherish  the  experience  of  God  in  Jesus.  Still 
rest  on  the  impregnable  fact  of  the  moral  power 
and  the  spiritual  insight  which  personal  com- 
munion wuth  the  Almighty  has  brought  to  you. 
Still  will  to  do  the  will  of  God,  and  then  you  shall 
know  the  doctrine.  Then,  perhaps,  you  shall 
be  among  those  who  shall  help  you  remake  that 
doctrine,  in  glowing  and  effective  utterance,  for 
your  time  and  generation. 

The  fourth  and  final  reason  why  we  sometimes 
lose  our  faith,  in  college,  is  personal  and  moral. 
Often,  for  instance,  it  is  atrophied  through  dis- 
use; we  lose  it  just  because  we  won't  employ  it. 
Moral  inertia,  spiritual  laziness,  beset  us.  The 
many  distractions  of  college  life  crowd  out  the 
quieter  and  the  finer  things.  The  good  is  the 
worst  enemy  of  our  best.     Therefore,  we  don't 

140 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

live  up  to  what  we  do  believe.  We  don't  exer- 
cise our  faith;  hence  it  pines  away.  One  will 
never  get  more  experience  of  religion  until  one 
has  used  to  the  utmost  all  that  one  has,  even  as 
one  never  grows  in  mental  power  until  the  mind 
has  worked  hard;  and  never  increases  in  physical 
strength  until  every  muscle  is  exercised  to  the 
utmost.  Very  many  young  men  take  their 
religion  for  granted  and  pay  no  serious  attention 
to  it,  and  then  are  surprised  that  they  have  so 
little  of  it.  There  is  no  small  amount  of  religious 
doubt,  so  called,  in  college,  which  has  no  right 
to  be  dignified  by  that  honorable  name.  It  is 
nothing  more  or  less  than  spiritual  ignorance  and 
mental  triviality.  It  is  not  a  thing  of  which  to 
be  proud;  it  is  a  thing  of  which  to  be  ashamed. 
In  the  previous  paragraphs  of  this  chapter,  we 
have  been  dealing  with  the  great  battlefields  of 
faith,  where  strong  men,  and  good  men  and  true, 
on  both  sides  of  the  contest,  wage  an  honest 
fight.  But  the  undergraduate  doubt,  which  is 
born  of  religious  indifference  and  intellectual 
laziness,  has  no  place  on  those  great  fields.  What 
this  kind  of  skeptic  needs  is  to  take  himself  and 
his  world  more  seriously,  and  he  would  do  well  to 
beware  lest  the  world  and  life  be  as  cavalier  with 
him  as  he  now  is  with  them. 

Again,  there  are  many  men  who  appear  to  be 
141 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

unable  to  begin  the  religious  life  because  they 
think  they  are  n't  good  enough.  This  is  one  of 
the  inhibitions  which  grows  out  of  the  invincible 
modesty  of  youth.  I  think  we  ought  to  add, 
however,  such  is  the  amazing  inconsistency  of 
human  nature,  that  this  quite  veritable  modesty 
sometimes  goes  hand  in  hand  with  a  very  vigor- 
ous self-conceit.  These  men  apparently  look 
upon  the  Church,  or  the  college  Christian  Asso- 
ciation, as  being  graduate  schools  for  saints.  But 
they  are  n't.  They  are  rather  kindergartens  for 
sinners,  and  most  of  us  could  qualify  quite  easily 
in  them.  To  call  yourself  a  disciple  of  Jesus 
does  n't  mean  that  you  know,  but  that  you  want 
to  know;  it  does  n't  mean  that  you  are  now 
good;  it  means  that  you  really  desire  to  be  good. 
Every  man  who  goes  out  in  the  autumn  for 
football  does  not,  thereby,  set  himself  up,  in  a 
superior  manner,  before  the  college,  as  claiming 
to  be  a  proficient  athlete.  Nobody  thinks  that 
trying  for  a  team  implies  athletic  prominence 
or  physical  conceit.  But  a  man  becomes  a 
disciple  of  football  or  baseball,  and  he  goes  out 
with  the  crowd  and  tries  to  follow  his  leader,  and 
to  learn,  and  grow  through  the  trials  which  may 
confront  him.  So  it  is  with  following  Jesus. 
To  call  yourself  his  disciple  does  not  mean  that 
you  are  a  holier-than-thou  person,  or  that  you 

142 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

are  making  the  slightest  claim  to  knowing  very 
much  about  Him  now.  It  only  means  that  you 
would  like  to  believe  in  Him,  that  you  want  to 
know  Him,  that  you  are  going  to  try  to  follow 
Him. 

And,  once  more,  there  are  men  who  lose  their 
faith,  or  who  won't  try  to  create  a  faith,  not 
because  they  think  themselves  unworthy  of  the 
Church  or  of  the  Christian  Association,  but 
because  they  think  these  institutions  are  not 
good  enough  for  them.  They  have  a  keen  eye 
for  the  pious  sinner,  the  canting  hypocrite,  and 
the  youthful  prig.  They  see  a  great  many  more 
of  them  in  the  world  than  actually  exist;  for 
these  are  all  rare  types.  They  jeer  at  the 
reactionaries  and  obscurantists  in  the  ecclesiasti- 
cal ranks ;  they  see  the  inertia,  and  the  conserv- 
atism of  the  Church  —  all  the  defects  that  are 
too  apt  to  accompany  an  ancient  institution. 
To  be  sure,  the  Church  has  survived  the  chances 
and  changes  of  two  thousand  years;  has  seen 
the  ancient  empires  around  the  Mediterranean 
wane  and  vanish;  has  persisted  through  all  the 
climatic,  social,  political,  and  economic  changes 
of  the  modern  world.  But  they  think  that  now 
her  day  is  about  done,  and  they  prefer  to  stand 
outside  and  rail  at  her,  rather  than  come  inside 

and  help  her. 

143 


THE  COLLEGE  COLUSE 

Well,  it  is  true  that  she  has  plenty  of  defects. 
The  laity  are  the  only  material  for  her  clergy, 
and  men  like  her  critics  are  the  only  material  for 
her  laity.  For  long  she  conceived  of  herself  as 
an  ark  of  salvation  to  which  the  elect  withdrew 
from  a  perishing  and  somewhat  contemptible 
world.  Sometimes  she  has  lived  off  the  com- 
munity, rather  than  for  it;  and  has  been  more 
concerned  with  the  conserving  of  her  prestige 
and  the  perpetuation  of  her  organization  than 
with  the  service  of  her  day  and  generation.  To 
the  social  and  industrial  strife  of  the  moment 
she  was  not  over-ready  to  apply  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  nor,  as  she  contemplated  the  comfortable, 
bourgeois  aristocracy  which  filled  her  pews,  was 
she  too  eager  to  socialize  her  ethics.  Yet  to-day, 
as  in  every  day,  she  is  doing  the  difficult,  the 
patient,  and  the  steadfast  service  in  the  com- 
munity. She  is  bringing  to  the  modern  state 
what  no  other  organization  can  bring  —  its 
spiritual  dynamic,  its  vision  of  a  purified  and 
glorified  humanity,  made  one  with  itself  in  God. 
Down  through  the  centuries,  for  all  her  pride  of 
place  and  lust  for  power,  for  all  her  follies  and 
mistakes,  the  Church  has  been  the  chief  factor 
in  the  civilizing  of  our  western  world. 

Did  you  ever  see  a  boy  who  was  born  of  poor 
parents,  ignorant,  hard-working  folk,  who  had 

144 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

deformed  their  hands  by  toil,  and  turned  their 
nights  into  day,  to  clothe  him  and  feed  him  and 
warm  him,  and  send  him  to  school?  And  when 
he  grew  up,  strong  and  able  because  of  these 
advantages  which  they  had  lovingly  and  patiently 
gotten  for  him,  they  sent  him  to  college  and  gave 
their  love  and  their  tears  and  their  prayers,  their 
time  and  effort  and  all  their  substance,  for  him 
and  his  advantage.  They  grew  old  and  broken, 
and  gray  and  bent,  they  were  dull  and  uncouth 
and  unlettered,  not  used  to  the  polite  and  gra- 
cious ways  of  life,  and  yet  they  gave  all  they  had 
to  him,  and  lost  their  lives  in  his.  And  he  went 
through  the  graduate  school,  and  he  became,  let 
us  say,  a  polished  and  a  brilliant  lawyer;  he 
lived  in  a  large  world,  in  a  dignified  and  formal 
and  comfortable  house,  among  well-mannered 
and  sophisticated  and  highly  intelligent  people. 
And  he  forgot  his  old  father  and  mother;  he  was 
rather  ashamed  of  them,  anyway,  for  their 
lapses  of  language  were  intolerable,  their  views 
of  the  world  absurd,  and  they  did  n't  know  how 
to  dress.  They  were  'way  behind  the  times. 
And  they  could  n't  do  very  much  for  him  now, 
and  he  did  n't  want  to  be  identified  with  them. 
He  wished  they  were  well  out  of  the  way.  Did 
you  ever  see  such  a  boy.?  What  would  you 
think  of  him.?     Well,  the  Church  is  your  mother, 

145 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

my  friends.  She  is  the  venerable  and  patient 
mother  of  us  alL  She  has  transmitted  the  hope 
of  the  race,  the  behef  in  the  indefectible  worth 
and  honor  of  human  nature,  the  vision  of  the 
good  and  gracious  God.  She  saved,  in  her 
monasteries  and  churches,  the  remnants  of  the 
ancient  learning  in  the  awful  wreck  and  break-up 
of  great  empires.  She  kept  the  torch  of  truth 
alight  and  made  life  tolerable  and  decent  in  the 
turbulent  and  decentralized  days  of  feudalism. 
She  sent  her  missionaries  to  our  savage  ancestors, 
who  were  offering  their  human  sacrifices  in  the 
dark  forests  of  Germany  and  Great  Britain. 
She  founded  our  schools  and  colleges,  and 
created  and  organized  our  philanthropies,  and 
herself  sowed  the  seeds  of  democracy.  Our 
country,  our  colleges,  our  homes,  all  the  refuges 
of  our  lives  we  owe  to  her.  Out  from  her  capa- 
cious life  have  these  things  issued.  And,  in  times 
of  dreadful  storms  and  stress,  when  body  and 
mind  and  spirit  have  almost  gone  under  and 
whole  races  of  men  have  been  in  despair,  she  has 
gathered  them  to  herself  in  sublime  self-abnega- 
tion and  in  her  bosom  they  have  found  shelter 
and  peace.  She  is  an  ancient  and  venerable 
mother.  She  is  worn  with  the  strifes  and  the 
labors,  the  anguish,  the  eJBPort,  and  the  vision  of 
many  generations.     She  is  slow  to  change,  and 

146 


THE  EXCEEDING  DIFFICULTIES  OF  BELIEF 

she  is  conservative  in  temper,  and  she  does 
demand  great  things  of  us,  and  sometimes  we 
have  to  have  patience  with  our  ancient  mother. 
But  when  there  are  great  moral  issues  on,  and 
fights  to  be  won,  and  sacrifices  to  be  made,  again 
she  gathers  up  her  ancient  strength  and  Hfts  her 
gray  head,  and  still  she  goes  on  ahead,  and  still 
men  come  after  her.  And  what  shall  we  do,  my 
brothers,  we,  who  are  her  children,  we,  whom  she 
has  nourished  and  brought  into  the  world,  we, 
who  owe  our  all  to  what  she  has  been  and  done.^* 
Shall  we  rail  at  her,  laugh  at  her,  desert  her,  be 
ashamed  of  her?  Or  shall  we  stand  by  her,  as 
she  has  ever  stood  by  our  fathers  and  by  us.? 


CHAPTER  VI 

RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

We  come,  now,  to  the  last  of  our  discussions  of 
the  religious  problem  of  the  undergraduate.  We 
have  tried  to  make  clear  what  the  religious  in- 
stinct is,  and  to  describe  and  commend  that 
particular  explanation  and  expression  of  it  known 
as  Christianity.  Particularly  we  have  tried  to 
show  how  Christianity  is  not  a  form  of  words  or 
of  ideas,  but  a  form  of  power,  a  moral  dynamic, 
which  accompanies  the  experience  of  reconcilia- 
tion with  God  and  ourselves  and  men,  brought 
about  by  faith  in  the  person  and  teaching  of 
Jesus.  We  have  also  looked  at  this  Christian 
experience  in  the  light  of  its  history  in  the  world, 
and  at  the  difficulties  which  have  beset  it,  and 
we  have  reviewed  the  chief  causes  which  have 
seemed  to  make  it  impossible  for  many  good  and 
able  men  to  accept  its  teaching. 

Now,  neither  of  these  previous  chapters  will 
have  fulfilled  their  purpose  unless  they  have 
made  you  see  how  natural  and  how  universal  a 
phenomenon  religion  is;  how  normal  and  benef- 
icent are  its  operations,  and  how  precious  its 
rewards,  as  it  enlarges  the  horizons  of  life,  and 

148 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

imparts,  to  the  most  insignificant  activities  of 
daily  living,  abiding  values  and  continuous  in- 
spiration. Starting,  then,  from  this  assertion  of 
the  indispensableness  of  religion,  its  natural  and 
central  place  in  a  normal  and  completed  life,  we 
take  up  the  theme  of  this  chapter,  and  inquire. 
If  religion  be  thus  important,  just  what  place 
should  it  hold  in  the  student's  life;  what  is  the 
relation  between  learning  and  the  cultivation  of 
the  spirit? 

As  we  try  to  answ^er  that  question,  we  may 
say,  first,  and  in  general,  that  men  have  always 
perceived  that  there  is  a  natural  and  intimate 
connection  between  the  discipline  of  the  mind 
and  the  cultivation  of  the  spirit.  Churches  and 
schools  stand  close  together  in  the  history  of 
western  Europe  and  of  our  own  nation,  and  have, 
indeed,  for  the  most  part,  been  inseparable. 
Few  things  are  more  striking  among  contempo- 
rary tendencies  in  America  than  the  growing 
sense  in  this  Republic  that  religion  and  learning, 
education  and  piety,  cannot  be  permanently  and 
successfully  kept  apart. 

/  Our  public  school  system  is  built  upon  the 
principle  of  the  separation  of  Church  and  State. 
It  has  appeared  to  be  a  corollary  of  that  princi- 
ple that  no  sort  of  religious  instruction  should 
be  given  under  state  or  federal  auspices.     We 

149 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

have  to-day,  all  through  the  Middle  West,  the 
truly  amazing  sight  of  a  system  of  education 
which,  from  the  kindergarten  to  the  graduate 
school,  cultivates  everything  in  the  individual 
except  his  spirit,  and,  to  a  large  extent,  ignores 
that  portion  of  the  personality  where  ideals  are 
formed,  convictions  originate,  and  motives  take 
their  rise.  But  here  in  the  East,  where  our 
secular  school  system  has  been  tried  out  longer, 
it  is  significant  to  see  how  the  sense  of  the  com- 
munity is  endeavoring,  by  means  of  private 
enterprise,  to  supplement  its  spiritual  impoverish- 
ment. On  the  one  hand,  we  have  the  parochial 
schools  of  the  Roman  Catholic  communion, 
maintained  by  taxpayers  who  are  already  sup- 
porting the  public  school  system,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  insuring  that  religion  and  scholarship 
shall  not  be  dissociated  for  their  children.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  have,  in  Protestant  communi- 
ties, the  rapid  increase  in  the  expensive  private 
fitting  school,  one  of  whose  chief  reasons  for 
commending  itself  to  the  public  is  that  it  offers 
religious  instruction  and  church  privileges,  to- 
gether with  secular  learning;  and  this  school 
also  is  supported  by  those  who  are  already  paying 
for  the  public  instruction  of  their  children  by  the 
State.  One  sometimes  wonders  what  is  to  be 
the  future  of  the  public  school  in  these  Eastern 

150 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

States,  with  the  best  elements  of  both  the 
CathoKc  and  the  Protestant  communities  steadily 
being  withdrawn  from  it.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, it  cannot  continue  to  be  the  nursery  of 
American  democracy  that  it  once  was.  Cer- 
tainly, this  withdrawal  indicates,  among  other 
things,  the  conviction  on  the  part  of  mature  men 
and  women  that  the  education  of  the  spirit  is  at 
least  as  valuable  as  the  training  of  the  body  and 
the  mind.  It  indicates  that  we  are  beginning  to 
see  that  the  best  which  a  purely  secular  educa- 
tion can  do  for  a  youth  is  to  acquaint  him  with 
the  uniform  workings  of  the  world,  the  laws  of 
nature  and  life,  and  that  it  is  quite  as  necessary, 
both  for  himself  and  for  society,  that  his  will 
should  be  disciplined  as  well,  to  conform  itself  to 
the  laws  which  the  mind  perceives.  It  is  not, 
then,  without  significance  that  the  three  com- 
manding physical  expressions  of  school  and  uni- 
versity life  in  the  Eastern  States  are  the  chapel, 
the  library,  and  the  gymnasium.  For  all  three 
of  these  supplement  each  other,  and  naturally 
belong  together  in  the  making  of  a  man. 

And  yet,  some  of  us  always,  and  all  of  us 
sometimes,  feel  a  little  distrust  of  too  close  an 
alliance  between  piety  and  scholarship,  and  that 
distrust  is,  probably,  most  active  at  the  under- 
graduate's time  of  life.     There  are  three  groups 

151 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

of  men  in  college,  two  of  them  approaching  the 
question  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  religionist, 
and  one  of  them  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
scholar,  w^ho  agree  in  opposing  and  disliking  a 
close  mutual  dependence  between  scholarship  and 
religion. 

The  first  of  these  groups  is  probably  the 
largest  in  the  college.  It  consists  of  those  men 
in  whom  the  religious  experience,  by  reason  of 
previous  environment  or  inheritance,  has  natu- 
rally expressed  itself  in  traditional  forms  and 
conventional  convictions.  The  devotional  and 
practical  uses  of  Scripture  have  been  exalted 
in  their  minds.  The  historic  postulates  and 
creeds  of  Christianity  have  been  regarded  as 
sufficient  and  obligatory  upon  the  present  be- 
liever. But  when  the  youth  comes  up  to  the 
college  of  liberal  arts,  he  is  plunged  at  once  into 
an  impartial,  exacting,  austerely  intellectual 
atmosphere.  He  finds  the  air  of  the  classroom 
cool  and  cautious  and  neutral,  and  its  spirit 
sufficiently  sterile  and  frigid.  If  he  enters  any 
one  of  half  a  dozen  courses  in  the  departments  of 
natural  science,  history,  psychology,  or  philos- 
ophy, there  critical  research,  comparative  study, 
a  new  historical  method,  a  modern  view  of  the 
world,  all  appear  maliciously  to  combine  to  pull 
his   house   of    faith    about   his    ears.     Symbols 

152 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

and  doctrines,  precious  from  earliest  childhood, 
and  identified  by  him  with  his  moral  victo- 
ries and  his  spiritual  achievements,  are  ruthlessly 
swept  aside.  The  external  habits  of  piety,  to 
which  he  has  been  accustomed  in  his  guides  and 
teachers,  may  be  largely  absent  from  his  in- 
structors in  the  classroom.  These  men  seem  to 
him  to  live  in  another  world,  which  recognizes 
few  of  the  values  of  his  world,  which,  if  it  prizes 
at  all  the  inner  life,  finds  far  from  obvious 
channels  for  its  expression.  How  lonely,  indeed, 
how  terrified  and  bewildered,  many  an  unsophis- 
ticated and  sensitive  lad  has  been,  as  he  has  faced 
the  specters  of  his  mind  during  the  rapid  develop- 
ment of  his  college  years.  We  do  not  wonder  if 
he  reacts  against  the  learning  which  appears  to  be 
the  enemy  of  the  spirit.  We  do  not  condemn 
him  if  he  rails  against  what  seems  to  him  to  be  a 
complacent  intellectualism,  or  if  he  adopts  the 
old  vicious  antithesis  between  spirituality  and 
science,  the  scholar  and  the  seer.  Rather,  we 
who  teach  wonder  whether  by  carelessness  or 
indifference  w^e  have  obscured  what  w^e  should 
illumine.  I  suppose  the  most  important  quali- 
fication for  a  teacher  of  immature  minds  is  the 
having  of  a  just  scale  of  values,  the  knowing  how 
to  keep  first  things  first  when  talking  and  teach- 
ing in  the  classroom.     Sometimes  the  teacher 

153 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

obscures  the  truth  with  technical  language,  or 
by  abstract  and  pedantic  presentation.  Some- 
times we  are  too  worldly-wise,  or  so  provincial 
in  our  own  view  of  life  that,  as  we  teach  the 
truth,  we  fail  to  convey  with  it  the  spiritual 
glory  which  is  its  natural  accompaniment  and 
attestation  in  any  department  of  human  knowl- 
edge. Perhaps  we  too  far  divorce  our  science 
or  our  philosophy  from  those  human  origins  and 
those  specific  applications  wdiich  chiefly  commend 
and  interpret  it  to  immature  minds.  But, 
however  far  we  may  have  failed  in  our  teaching, 
we  never  for  a  moment  doubt,  nor  must  we  let 
youth  doubt,  that  the  severest  scholarship,  the 
purest  learning,  are  indispensable  to  true  religion, 
and  they  are  never  incompatible  with  it.  We 
hear  a  good  deal,  nowadays,  about  the  abuse  of 
special  privilege,  and  w^e  are  seeing  the  deter- 
mined efforts  being  made  by  state  and  federal 
governments  to  wipe  out  special  privilege,  as  it 
is  found  in  the  commercial,  the  political,  and  the 
industrial  world.  But  one  of  the  greatest  sinners 
in  the  use  of  special  privileges  has  been  the 
Christian  Church.  For  long  she  claimed  that  the 
canons  of  judgment  which  men  were  allowed  to 
exercise  in  every  other  department  of  their  lives 
must  not  be  brought  to  bear  upon  her;  that  her 
dicta  were  to  be  accepted,  not  questioned;   and 

154 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

that  if  what  she  declared  to  be  true  appeared  to 
be  disproved  by  the  known  truth  in  some  other 
department  of  human  hfe  and  effort,  still  her 
commands  and  decisions  were  to  be  accepted  and 
obeyed.  Men  have  even  gone  so  far  as  to  feel 
and  to  assert  that  where  religious  conviction  and 
pure  knowledge  appeared  to  clash,  why  then  so 
much  the  worse  for  pure  knowledge!  And,  even 
as  we  are  learning  how  dangerous  a  thing  it  is  for 
the  State  and  for  commerce  and  industry  and  the 
social  well-being  of  the  community  to  permit  spe- 
cial privileges  to  flourish  in  the  nation,  so  we  have 
also  learned  that  it  is  equally  dangerous  for  the 
cause  of  true  religion.  To  favor  scientific  re- 
search everywhere  else,  but  to  discourage  it  in 
the  realm  of  man's  permanent  interests,  where  his 
origin  and  his  destiny  are  concerned,  would  be 
only  less  fatal  for  religion  than  for  him  who 
believes  in  it.  No  one,  indeed,  will  ever  under- 
stand the  reality  and  the  power  of  the  spiritual 
life  unless  he  values  religion  too  highly  and 
believes  in  it  too  profoundly  ever  for  a  moment 
to  adopt  the  point  of  view  of  a  pietistic  obscur- 
antism. Religion  is  too  inclusive  and  too  in- 
finitely precious  to  the  race  ever  to  be  given  over 
to  the  mere  custody  of  the  instinct  and  the  emo- 
tions. To  be  unwilling  to  submit  our  spiritual 
convictions    and   religious   faiths   to   the    most 

155 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

searching  inquiry  and  criticism  is  to  confess  that 
in  our  heart  of  hearts  we  are  afraid  of  the  results 
of  that  experiment,  and  are,  like  John  Henry 
Newman,  unconscious  and  fundamental  skeptics. 
The  very  cornerstone  of  a  true  religious  belief 
is  the  assertion  that  truth  and  God  cannot  be 
found  apart,  and  that  there  is  nothing  real  in  one 
department  of  the  universe  which  can  ever  alter 
or  diminish  the  realities  of  another. 

Indeed,  a  sincere  and  candid  scholarship  is 
not  only  morally  obligatory  upon  the  believer, 
but  it  is  the  most  able  champion  of  a  free  and 
rational  piety.  This  is  well  illustrated  in  the 
case  of  the  authority  of  the  Christian  Scriptures. 
The  Church  has  always  believed  in  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Bible,  and  has  made  it  a  rule  of  faith 
and  practice  for  her  children.  Most  of  us  were 
brought  up  under  one  or  another  of  several 
theories  of  that  inspiration  which  were  formu- 
lated during  the  Protestant  Reformation,  and 
which,  in  their  most  extreme  and  mechanical 
expressions,  issued  from  the  Swiss  reformer, 
Zwingli,  and  his  followers.  These  theories  set 
forth,  in  general,  that  the  entire  content  of  the 
Hebrew  and  Christian  Scriptures  was  given  by 
the  dictation  of  God;  that  they  are  of  a  flat  and 
equal  inspiration  from  cover  to  cover,  and  may 
be  said  to  have  possessed  originally  a  verbal 

156 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

inerrancy.  Now,  no  man  can  go  through  college 
to-day  and  be  taught  any  just  historical  method, 
any  just  canons  of  literary  criticism,  or  any 
adequate  theistic  philosophy,  and  maintain  that 
view.  We  soon  learn,  therefore,  that  our  teachers 
do  not  regard  the  Bible  as  inerrant;  they  do  not 
believe  it  has  a  flat  and  equal  inspiration  from 
cover  to  cover;  and  they  would  not  for  a  moment 
dream  of  accepting  it  as  an  authoritative  guide 
either  in  natural  science  or  in  history. 

What,  then,  shall  the  devout  student  do.^ 
Shall  he  condemn  as  impious  the  learning  which 
shatters  his  traditional  convictions  and  refuse 
to  apply  that  learning  to  his  religious  life.^ 
Shall  he  keep  in  a  closed  compartment,  so  to 
speak,  that  portion  of  his  experience.^  If  he 
does  so,  he  commits  a  moral  and  intellectual 
misdemeanor  which  is  as  foolish  as  it  is  indefen- 
sible. Shall  he,  on  the  other  hand,  rashly  throw 
away  his  whole  belief  in  the  authority  of  Scrip- 
ture, and,  without  further  investigation  or  any 
clear  grounds  for  his  action,  adopt  a  superficial 
and  unintelligent  skepticism.^  Again,  he  will  be 
guilty  of  both  moral  and  intellectual  wrongdoing. 
But  what  he  ought  to  do  is  to  say,  "I  am  a 
beginning  scholar,  and  revere  myself  as  such. 
I  am  here  to  get  at  the  truth,  and  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth.     Both  the  opportu- 

157 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

iiity  and  the  obligation  are  mine  to  discover 
why  my  learning  and  my  faith  appear  to  be 
hopelessly  divergent  in  this  important  matter." 
And  then,  by  virtue  of  his  very  scholarship,  if 
only,  on  the  one  hand,  he  will  not  despise  it,  and 
on  the  other  hand,  will  be  thorough  in  the  use 
of  it,  he  will  find  that  the  new  learning  does  not 
destroy  his  faith,  but,  on  the  contrary,  greatly  re- 
inforces it,  and  gives  to  it  a  new  foundation.  For 
he  will  discover  that  what  modern  scholarship 
does  is  not  to  deny  the  inspiration  of  Scrip- 
ture, but  to  restate  the  theory  of  that  inspira- 
tion; and  to  rest  the  proof  of  it  on  internal,  not 
external,  witness,  and  to  account  for  it  by  natural 
and  logical,  not  supernatural  and  arbitrary, 
processes.  Those  who  know  the  Bible  best 
to-day,  who  have  the  most  intelligent  and 
accurate  understanding  of  it,  who  can  distinguish 
in  its  compilations,  its  various  authors  and 
editors,  and  can  re-date  its  manuscripts,  are 
precisely  those  who  most  believe  in  it.  It  is 
they  who  have  given  us  the  new  theory  of 
inspiration,  and  the  tenable  theory.  The  scholar 
is  the  champion,  not  the  destroyer,  of  the  faith, 
for  he  says:  "I  know  that  the  Bible  is  inspired, 
not  because  God  dictated  it,  not  because  miracles 
or  predictions  are  found  in  it,  not  because  it  is, 
or    ever    has    been,    inerrant;     but    because    it 

lo8 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

inspires  me."  Being  an  inspiring  book,  of  course 
it  is  inspired.  As  Coleridge  said,  "I  believe  in 
the  Bible,  because  it  finds  me  at  greater  depths 
and  heights  than  any  other  book." 

It  is  precisely  the  scholar,  who  can  to-day  best 
assert  the  authority  of  the  Scripture.  He 
declares  that  its  ethical  and  spiritual  teachings 
are  true,  and  rests  the  proof  of  that  assertion, 
not  on  the  dictum  of  a  church  or  a  council,  not 
on  the  authority  of  a  great  tradition,  but  back 
upon  human  nature  itself.  For  the  Bible  has 
commended  itself  as  true  to  the  experience  of 
successive  generations  of  men,  down  through  the 
ages.  All  sorts  and  kinds  of  men,  under  all  sorts 
of  social,  economic,  intellectual  conditions,  have 
found  truth  in  it.  Therefore,  by  the  witness  of 
the  experience  of  the  race,  it  is  known  to  be  true. 
It  does  not  claim  for  itself,  and  for  the  most  part 
the  Church  has  never  claimed  for  it,  that  it 
contains  inspired  historical  and  scientific  material. 
But  it  does  claim  for  itself,  and  the  experience 
of  the  world  has  amply  supported  that  claim, 
that  it  reveals  the  life  of  God  and  the  heart  of  a 
man,  each  to  the  other,  as  does  no  other  literature 
of  the  world. 

'•  Modern  scholarship,  then,  has  here,  as  in  a 
hundred  other  places,  done  infinite  service  to 
religion  by  its  restatement  of  the  nature  of  the 

159 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

inspiration  and  the  extent  of  the  authority  of 
Holy  Scripture.  Such  attacks  upon  the  Bible, 
for  instance,  as  were  widely  and  brilliantly  made 
by  the  late  Colonel  Ingcrsoll  would  have  been 
futile  if  scholarship  had  been  allowed  to  come  to 
the  defense  of  Scripture  in  his  day.  For  his 
criticism  of  the  Bible  was  based  chiefly  upon  a 
theory  of  its  origin  and  a  conception  of  its  nature 
which  scholarship  has  shown  to  be  quite  beside 
the  point.  The  Christian  scholar,  to-day,  re- 
gards the  Bible  as  the  imperfect  record  of  an 
ascending  spiritual  evolution;  the  vivid  history 
of  the  growing  experience  of  God  in  the  race  of 
Israel;  the  race  which  above  all  others  was 
richly  endowed  w^ith  religious  genius.  This 
spiritual  evolution  reaches  its  culmination  in  the 
great  prophets  Amos  and  Hosea,  Isaiah  and 
Jeremiah,  and  finally  comes  to  a  perfect  fruition 
in  the  teaching  and  person  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  by 
whom  all  that  comes  before  and  after  Him,  in 
the  record,  is  to  be  judged.  And  we  believe  and 
accept  this  incomparable  teaching,  not  because 
it  comes  down  to  us  with  the  authority  of  the 
past,  but  because  it  searches  and  finds,  illumines 
and  empowers,  the  present.  We  do  not  believe 
a  thing  is  true  because  it  is  in  the  Bible.  We 
are  on  far  safer  ground  than  that;  we  believe 
in  the  Bible  because  we  know  it  to  be  true. 

160 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

Here,  then,  is  a  very  familiar  instance  of  the 
value  of  the  new  science  of  history,  of  the  new 
methods  of  literary  criticism  and  of  the  new  view 
of  the  world,  as  allies  of  sincere  and  intelligent 
religion.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  learning  has  not 
been  the  foe  of  the  spirit,  but  has  given  to  our 
faith  a  new  expression,  a  new  interpretation, 
and  a  new  apologetic. 

But  there  is  another  group  of  men  in  the 
college  who  depreciate  the  patient  and  indirect 
processes  of  scholarship,  and  think  them  not  too 
necessary  for  the  religious  life.  There  are  to  be 
found,  in  the  modern  college,  many  young  men 
who  are  chiefly  conspicuous  for  their  ethical 
idealism.  Their  interests  are  not  abstract,  but 
concrete;  not  academic,  but  practical.  And 
they  themselves  have  devout  rather  than  alert 
minds.  These  men  are  lovable  and  humane 
spirits.  They  are  keenly  aware  of  the  sorrow 
and  the  sin  and  the  injustice  of  this  present 
world,  and  anxious  to  devote  their  lives  to 
remedial  and  preventive  service.  Through  their 
various  businesses  or  professions,  they  mean, 
when  college  days  are  over,  to  aid  their  world 
rather  than  to  exploit  it.  These  are  the  men 
who  have  made  the  term  "social  service"  one 
of  the  watchwords  of  the  twentieth-century  col- 
lege.    But  very  few  of  these  men  appear  to 

161 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

reflect  that  the  value  of  social  service  is  largely 
determined  by  the  maturity  and  efficiency  of  the 
servant;  and  that  all  any  one  has  to  serve  with 
is  himself.  On  the  contrary,  they  are  more 
attracted  by  the  ardent  and  generous  ideal  of 
immediate  benefactions  than  by  scrupulous  and 
severe  preparation  for  a  more  significant  and 
difficult  service  in  the  future.  These  men  are 
among  the  most  lovable  and  the  most  exasperat- 
ing of  the  types  to  be  found  in  the  present  college. 
They  have  less  intellectual  than  moral  integrity. 
They  can  scarcely  be  said  to  value  adequately 
specific  intellectual  convictions  or  a  thorough 
scholastic  equipment.  On  the  contrary,  they 
appear  to  think  that  the  noblest  idea  of  the 
college  course  is  that  it  exists  for  a  general  culture, 
to  be  infused  with  moral  and  religious  earnest- 
ness, for  social  ends.  Hence,  they  have  far  more 
conscience  about  conduct  than  they  have  about 
scholarship.  They  realize  the  moral  obligation 
to  be  good.  They  do  not  realize  the  moral 
obligation  to  be  intelligent.  These  men  look 
askance  at  nearly  all  advanced  or  very  technical 
training,  and  are  loath  to  recognize  the  value  of 
such  studies  as  bear  only  indirectly  upon  the 
practical  issues  of  life.  \Yhy  read  the  Greek  and 
Latin  classics,  when  our  fellow  citizens  wait  to 
be  taught  the  rudiments  of  the  English  tongue? 

162 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

Why  be  occupied  with  experiments  in  natural 
science,  why  study  psychology  and  metaphysics, 
and  be  put  through  the  drill  of  higher  mathe- 
matics, when  there  are  mouths  to  feed,  and  feet 
to  be  shod,  and  bodies  to  be  warmed,  and  tears 
to  be  wiped  away?  The  chief  thing  is  not  the 
ornament  of  learning,  but  the  man.  Yes,  of 
course,  that  's  true.  But  this  group  sums  up 
the  man  almost  wholly  in  terms  of  moral  vigor, 
personal  attractiveness,  and  social  helpfulness. 
It  underrates  the  gray  matter.  One  must  con- 
fess there  is  something  a  little  wearying  and 
disappointing  in  the  almost  undivided  allegiance 
which  youth  gives  to  the  immediate,  the  obvious, 
and  the  practical. 

But,  of  course,  the  men  who  belong  to  this 
group  are  restless  during  their  four  college 
years.  They  feel  the  narrowing  isolation  of  the 
academic  walls.  Sometimes  religious  and  phil- 
anthropic associations  exploit  this  intellectual 
distaste  of  ethically  ideal  youth,  and  are  not 
unwilling  prematurely  to  exhaust  their  precious 
human  material.  So  these  half -prepared  scholars, 
these  near-students,  are  called  away  from  the 
library  and  the  student  lamp,  to  secretarial, 
administrative,  even  teaching,  positions.  There 
are  many  promising  and  popular  young  men  who 
are  unable  to  perceive  that  the  chiefcause  of 

163 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

their  favored  standing  in  the  community,  and 
their  only  real  asset  now,  is  the  mere  accident 
of  their  youth.  Hence,  they  underrate  the 
severe  intellectual  preparation  which  develops 
those  less  picturesque  but  more  solid  powers, 
which  will  deepen  and  abide  after  the  fervor  and 
the  fever  of  youth  have  passed  away.  A  few 
years  ago,  Dr.  Francis  Greenwood  Peabody, 
most  justly  pointed  out  that  it  is  the  great  mis- 
take of  American  life  that  "feeling  and  action  are 
crowding  out  of  the  foreground  of  interest  the 
function  of  thought;  piety  and  efficiency  are 
being  made  substitutes  for  intellectual  power." 
Now  the  passion  for  service  is  a  poor  passion  if 
it  supplants  the  passion  for  truth.  No  man  is 
competent  to  lead  his  generation  in  any  ideal 
way  till  he  has  matured  and  disciplined  his  mind 
as  well  as  his  spirit.  Premature  engagement  in 
the  activities  of  life,  to  the  deliberate  neglect  of 
the  intellectual  equipment  for  those  activities, 
means  that  the  student  is  bankrupting  his  future, 
and,  all  unconsciously,  exploiting  his  own  youth. 
And  I  am  most  concerned  to  say  a  word  to 
any  man  reading  these  pages,  who  may  be 
looking  forward  to  some  professional  form  of 
ethical  or  spiritual  leadership  in  his  generation. 
You  of  all  men  should  revere  learning,  and 
aim    at    scholarship.     It    will    be   well    for   the 

164 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

future  of  organized  religion  in  this  country  if 
every  young  man,  who  is  looking  forward  to 
associating  himself  with  it,  could  be  made  to 
understand  that  a  general  culture,  religious 
earnestness,  ability  to  talk  attractively  and 
effectively  on  the  common  duties  of  life,  are  quite 
insufficient  in  themselves  for  that  type  of  ethical 
and  spiritual  leadership  which  this  generation  is 
demanding.  Do  not  let  yourselves  forget  that 
in  every  age  men  have  demanded  far  more  than 
ethical  counsel  and  practical  helpfulness  from 
their  spiritual  advisers.  They  have  insisted  that 
these  men  should  direct  them  in  their  search  for 
light  on  the  great  speculative  questions  regarding 
the  origin  and  the  destiny  of  the  race  and  the 
nature  of  the  human  heart.  The  weakness  of  the 
Christian  Church  to-day  is  not  in  the  quantity 
but  the  quality  of  her  leaders.  There  are  enough 
of  them,  such  as  they  are.  It  is  not  so  much 
enthusiastic  as  expert  service  that  we  need. 

And  this  is  almost  equally  true  in  every  other 
department  of  human  effort.  In  the  old  days  of 
picturesque  warfare,  the  general  was  the  man 
who  in  brilliant  uniform  and  with  flashing  sword, 
astride  his  foaming  charger,  waved  high  the 
standard,  and  cried,  — 

"On,  ye  Brave 
Who  rush  to  glory,  or  the  grave!" 
165 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

Then  he  galloped  ahead,  followed  by  a  wildly 
cheering  multitude.  Such  a  man  would  be  a 
confounded  nuisance  and  an  arrant  failure  in  any 
strife  of  modern  times.  To-day  we  want  the 
general  who  knows,  not  does;  who  knows  mili- 
tary tactics  and  strategy;  who  knows  his  men, 
and  the  enemy,  and  the  intimate  topography  of 
the  field;  and  who  on  his  distant  hill  has  a  cle«?r, 
whole  view  of  it,  so  that,  with  the  unerring 
precision  of  the  expert,  he  moves  his  armies  like 
pawns  upon  a  chessboard  hither  and  yon.  I 
trust  you  see  the  meaning  of  the  illustration. 
The  more  generous  your  ideals  of  life,  the  more 
unselfish  your  aims,  the  more  religious  your 
spirit,  the  more  eager  you  should  be  for  the 
indispensable  ally  of  a  developed  and  disciplined 
intellect,  which  shall  give  steadiness  and  intelli- 
gence to  your  enthusiasm,  wisdom  and  inclusive- 
ness  to  your  endeavors. 

But  there  is  a  third  group  of  men  to  be  found 
in  the  college,  who  regard  the  alliance  between 
piety  and  learning  from  precisely  the  opposite 
point  of  view.  They  have  a  sort  of  intellectual 
contempt  for  religion.  It  belongs  to  women  and 
children  and  ministers,  to  romantic  and  senti- 
mental people,  to  emotional  and  illogical  beings. 
It  was  of  great  value  to  the  childhood  of  the  race, 
and  is  of  value  now  to  the  individual,  in  his 

166 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

childish  days,  but  surely  a  negligible  factor  for 
the  college  man.  Sometimes  its  chief  value  to 
this  group  of  men  is  that  it  offers  so  much  material 
for  flippant  comment  and  inexpensive  wit.  It 
was  long  ago  noted  that  the  sublime  lies  very 
near  to  the  ridiculous;  and  there  are  always  men 
who  are  not  unwilling  to  take  advantage  of  that 
fact,  and  who  would  sacrifice  a  conviction  for  an 
epigram,  an  ideal  for  a  bon  mot.  So  the  men 
in  this  group  are  not  at  all  concerned  lest  in- 
suflScient  devotion  be  mingled  with  their  learn- 
ing. They  are  rather  of  the  opinion  that  their 
scholarship  will  be  more  single-minded,  more 
veritable  and  effective,  if  it  is  quite  divorced 
from  either  the  public  or  the  private  exercises  of 
piety  during  their  four  undergraduate  years. 

It  must  be  said  that  one  is  often  struck  with 
the  nobility  of  the  motives  which  may  lie  behind 
this  apparently  hard  and  contemptuous  attitude. 
One  of  those  motives  is  a  fine  passion  for  the 
truth,  and  the  determination  to  make  the  most 
of  the  opportunity  to  find  it.  A  man  has  made 
sacrifices,  both  personal  and  material,  in  order 
to  gain  his  four  years'  academic  residence.  He 
has  now  that  most  rare  and  precious  thing  in  the 
American  world  —  leisure  for  intellectual  pur- 
suits. He  is  having  what  is  probably  his  only 
chance  to  drink  deep  at  the  fount  of  learning. 

167 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

Surely,  then,  the  library,  the  study,  the  labora- 
tory, and  the  seminar  room  may  be  exalted  high 
above  the  chapel.  He  will  always  have  the 
Church;  he  cannot  always  have  the  college. 
Again,  it  is  often  the  passion  for  intellectual 
integrity  and  ethical  sincerity  which  lies  behind 
this  deliberate  and  contemptuous  neglect  of  the 
spiritual  life.  In  the  churches  or  schools  from 
which  the  youth  has  come,  intellectual  freedom 
and  moral  independence  have  not  always  been 
associated  with  organized  religion.  In  college, 
therefore,  fired  by  that  passion  for  reality  and 
honesty,  which  is  one  of  the  noblest  things  in  the 
young  life,  he  reacts  from  all  the  external  obser- 
vances and  pious  practices  which  serve  to  remind 
him  of  abandoned  intellectual  expediencies,  and 
seem  to  bring  him  back  into  the  atmosphere  of 
timid  obscurantism. 

And  then  there  is  another  factor,  too.  We 
have  all  of  us  seen  youth  in  college  who  were  so 
good  that  there  was  something  positively  in- 
decent about  them.  Theirs  was  an  unnatural 
virtue.  They  were  too  good  to  be  true.  Or  we 
have  seen  youth  of  the  sort  whom  Phillips 
Brooks  remembered,  from  his  days  at  Alexandria; 
lads  w  ho  could  exhort  and  pray  with  one  another, 
at  the  college  prayer  meeting,  until  their  very 
natures  seemed  on  jQre,  but  who,  assembled  in 

168 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

the  classroom  on  the  next  morning,  were  found 
to  be  dullards  and  sluggards  when  viewed  in  the 
garish  light  of  common  day.  Their  devotion 
and  their  duty  were  divorced.  Their  religion  was 
neither  a  sanction  nor  a  standard  for  their  daily 
work.  Such  men  always  arouse,  in  their  more 
normal  fellows,  a  healthy  and  a  merited  contempt 
and  often  induce  in  them  distaste  for  all  religious 
forms  and  observances.  And  then  behind  it  all 
there  is,  I  dare  say,  a  temperamental  reason. 
The  scholar  is  by  nature  cool,  cautious,  critical. 
The  devotee  is  by  nature  warm,  eager,  imagina- 
tive. Those  personal  qualities,  therefore,  which 
induce  dependence  upon  and  delight  in  personal 
religion  and  public  worship  are  the  reverse  of  the 
ones  which  lead  men  to  the  lonely  and  con- 
centrated and  colorless  efforts  of  the  mind. 

It  is  quite  to  be  expected,  then,  in  these  four 
years,  when  scholastic  interests  are  naturally  to 
the  front,  that,  in  many  of  the  really  brilliant 
youth  of  the  college,  delight  in  and  dependence 
upon  the  cultivation  of  the  spirit  should  tend  to 
diminish.  But  it  is  to  just  this  type  of  youth, 
the  men  of  intellectual  ambitions  and  mental 
powers,  the  men  who  are  conscious  of  a  growing 
and  a  capacious  intelligence,  that  I  should  like 
to  address  the  final  paragraphs  of  this  chapter. 
It  is  precisely  those  men  who  are  chiefly  interested 

169 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

in  scientific  and  intellectual  pursuits  who  are 
the  last  men  in  the  world  who  can  afford  to 
neglect  the  assiduous  cultivation  of  the  spiritual 
life.  For  pure  learning  sometimes  degenerates 
into  pedantry.  The  scholar  is  always  in  danger 
of  becoming  the  scholastic.  Much  learning  often 
dehumanizes  men.  They  sink  to  a  narrow  in- 
tensity of  vision  within  their  own  department. 
Their  specialty  is  just  before  their  eyes,  its  little 
province  obscuring  the  great  kingdoms  of  the 
world.  With  the  measuring-rod  of  their  de- 
tached learning  they  mistakenly  gauge  the  uni- 
verse; their's  is  a  text-book  philosophy.  They 
become  provincials,  left  behind  in  some  side 
eddy  by  the  great  stream  of  human  life,  un- 
able any  longer  to  enter  into  and  sympathize 
with  its  normal  and  essential  experiences.  All 
the  bitter  flings  at  scholarship,  in  which  every 
age  has  delighted,  all  the  semi-contemptuous 
references  to  the  teacher  and  the  professor,  which 
practical  men  of  every  time  have  made,  are 
partly  due  to  this  fact,  that  scholarship  has  too 
often  carried  the  scholar  out  of  that  area  of  vital 
and  elemental  experience,  where  most  men  live 
their  lives,  and  where  the  indispensable  things 
of  life  are  to  be  found. 

The  scholar,  then,  of  all  men  in  the  world, 
needs  concrete  interests.     He  needs,  for  his  own 

170 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

even  development,  for  sweetness  and  sanity  of 
personality,  to  keep  in  close  touch  with  the 
warm,  throbbing  heart  of  human  life.  In  no 
way  can  he  do  this  so  certainly  as  by  maintaining 
his  religious  passion  and  cultivating  his  spiritual 
experience.  It  is  the  office  of  religion  to  en- 
large the  humanity  of  its  rotaries.  Men  never 
get  so  close  to  one  another  as  when  they  pray 
together.  They  never  so  truly  understand  one 
other  as  when  they  worship  side  by  side  the 
God  who  hath  made  of  one  blood  all  the  na- 
tions of  the  earth  and  who  is  no  respecter 
of  persons.  There  is  no  fellowship  the  world 
has  knowledge  of  so  potent  and  so  intimate 
as  that  which  knits  together  the  elect  in  one 
communion  and  fellowship  in  the  life  of  the 
Eternal  Spirit.  How  many  men  might  have 
their  influence  and  their  happiness  increased 
a  hundred  fold  were  their  humanity  equal  to 
their  learning,  and  able  thus  always  to  vitalize 
it  and  make  it  effective!  But  no  man  who 
maintains  a  sincere  and  simple  faith  needs  to 
fear  the  desiccating  results  of  long-continued 
and  laborious  research.  For  the  true  religionist 
is  a  supreme  humanist. 

Finally,  I  would  remind  you,  who  deprecate 
the  aUiance  between  learning  and  religion,  that 
the  last  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  made  it 

171 


THE  COLLEGE   COURSE 

terribly  clear  that  the  learning  and  science  of 
mankind,  where  they  are  divorced  from  piety, 
unconsecrated  by  a  spiritual  passion,  and  largely 
directed  by  selfish  motives,  can  neither  benefit 
nor  redeem  the  race.     Consider  for  a  moment 
the  enormous  expansion  of  knowledge  which  the 
world  has  witnessed  since  the  year  1859.     What 
prodigious  accessions  to  the  sum  of  our  common 
understanding  have  we  seen  in  the  natural  and 
the  humane  sciences;   and  what  marvelous  uses 
of   scientific   knowledge   for   practical   purposes 
have  we  discovered !     We  have  mastered  in  these 
latter  days  a  thousand  secrets  of  nature.     We 
have  freed  the  mind  from  old   ignorance  and 
ancient  superstition.     We  have  penetrated  the 
secrets  of  the  body,   and  can  almost  conquer 
death  and  indefinitely  prolong  the  span  of  human 
days.     We  face  the  facts  and  know  the  world  as 
our  fathers  could  never  do.     We  understand  the 
past  and  foresee  the  future.     But  the  most  sig- 
nificant thing  about  our  present  situation  is  this : 
how  little  has  this  wisdom,  in  and  of  itself,  done 
for  us!     It  has  made  men  more  cunning,  rather 
than  more  noble.     Still  the  body  is  ravaged  and 
consumed  by  passion.     Still  men  toil  for  others 
against  their   will,   and   "The  strong   spill   the 
blood  of  the  weak  for  their  ambition,  and  the 
sweat  of  the  children  for  their  greed."    Never 

172 


RELIGION  AND  SCHOLARSHIP 

was  learning  so  diffused,  nor  the  content  of 
scholarship  so  large  as  now.  Yet  the  great 
cities  are  as  Babylon  and  Rome  of  old,  where 
human  wreckage  multiplies,  and  hideous  vices 
flourish,  and  men  toil  without  expectancy,  and 
live  without  hope,  and  millions  exist  from  hand 
to  mouth.  As  we  survey  the  universal  unrest 
of  the  world  to-day,  and  see  the  horrors  of  war 
between  nation  and  nation  and  between  class 
and  class,  it  would  not  be  difficult  to  make  out 
a  case  for  the  thesis  that  the  scientific  and  in- 
tellectual advances  of  the  nineteenth  century 
have  largely  worked  to  make  men  keener  and 
more  capacious  in  their  suffering.  And,  at  least 
this  is  true;  in  just  so  far  as  the  achievement  of 
the  mind  has  been  divorced  from  the  consecra- 
tion of  the  spirit,  in  just  so  far  knowledge  has 
had  no  beneficent  potency  for  the  human  race. 

The  twentieth  century  needs,  in  order  to  make 
life  tolerable,  just  what  the  first  century  needed 

-  the  sacrifice  of  love,  the  devotion  of  the  spirit, 
the  humbling  of  the  soul  before  its  God.  Intel- 
lectual training  enriches  and  illumines  human 
lives  when  accompanied  by  the  light  and  peace 
of  a  veritable  moral  victory.  But  without  that 
victory,  it  can  make  men  into  devils.  Scholar- 
ship is  precious  and  sublime  when  it  is  directed 
to   precious   and  ideal   ends.     Learning  is   not 

173 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

of  much  use  if  the  learning  is  greater  than  the 
man  who  thinks  that  he  possesses  it.  We  ought 
to  be  thankful  that  in  our  American  colleges, 
across  the  campus  from  the  library,  stands  the 
college  church;  and  that  under  its  roof,  morning 
by  morning  and  Sunday  by  Sunday,  we  have  to 
assemble  for  meditation  and  quiet  and  com- 
munion. For  it  is  by  just  such  natural  and 
venerable  practices  of  the  spirit,  by  such  corpor- 
ate confessions  of  the  inner  life,  that  the  con- 
secration of  personality  keeps  pace  with  the 
enlargement  of  mentality,  and  the  man  grows 
with  his  learning. 


CHAPTER  VII 

IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

In  the  "Hibbert  Journal"  of  October,  1914,  there 
was  a  delightful  article  by  Professor  Erskine,  of 
Columbia  University,  on  the  provocative  theme: 
"The  Moral  Obligation  to  be  Intelligent."  In 
this  article  he  pointed  out  that  the  disposition  to 
consider  intelligence  a  positive  peril,  and  to 
make  an  antithesis  between  brains  and  virtue,  is 
an  ancient  custom  of  our  English  race.  He 
reminds  us  that,  in  our  literature,  most  men  of 
brains  have  been  conceived  of  as  villians,  as,  for 
instance,  lago  and  Macbeth  in  Shakespeare  and 
Satan  in  Milton's  "Paradise  Lost";  and  that 
most  men  of  honor,  while  they  may  have  been 
thought  of  as  knowing  good  and  evil,  have  been 
apparently  quite  unable  to  tell  them  apart.  And 
he  quotes  Kingsley's  delightfully  Victorian  line: 
**Be  good,  sweet  maid,  and  let  who  will  be  clever." 
It  is,  then,  part  of  our  inheritance  that  we 
should  suspect  brains,  and  even  think  that  a 
really  virile  male  is  obligated  to  depreciate 
brilliancy.  The  Anglo-Saxon  temperament  has 
always  exalted  doing,  at  the  expense  of  knowing. 
Half  unconsciously  we  expect  that  neither  first- 

175 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

rate  manhood  nor  large  efficiency  may  be  looked 
for  from  scholarship.  This  prejudice  was  very 
clearly  revealed  in  the  semi-contemptuous,  semi- 
patronizing  references  to  the  "doctor"  and  the 
"professor,"  when  our  present  Chief  Executive 
was  first  nominated  for  the  Presidency.* 

We  ought  not,  then,  to  be  over-surprised  or 
too  harshly  critical  if  we  find  the  undergraduate 
incapable,  both  by  inheritance  and  environment, 
of  justly  appreciating  intellectual  discipline. 
And  amazing  though  it  sounds,  and  is,  there  are, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  few  places  in  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world  where  this  naive  dislike  of  learning, 
this  provincial  distrust  of  intelligence,  more 
clearly  displays  itself  than  in  the  American 
college. 

It  is  one  of  the  many  humorous  elements  in 
our  undergraduate  life  that  the  question  which 
forms  the  theme  of  this  chapter,  "Is  Learning 
Essential .f^"  can  be  asked  in  all  good  faith,  and 
may  be  quite  seriously  debated.  It  is  certain 
that  many  of  the  students  in  our  colleges  quite 
frankly  and  innocently  regard  scholarship  as 
purely  incidental  to  an  undergraduate  career. 
When  we  remember  that  our  New  England  in- 
stitutions were  founded  to  produce  scholars  in 
general   and   a  learned   ministry   in   particular; 

*Dr.  Thomas  Woodrow  Wilson. 
176 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

that,  indeed,  a  lad  is  still  supposed  to  go  to  school 
primarily  to  get  schooling,  it  really  gives  us 
pause  to  contemplate  the  low  average  of  intelli- 
gence and  the  limited  intellectual  power  of  the 
typical  undergraduate.  This  may  seem  to  be  a 
harsh  indictment;  but  the  trouble  is  not  that  it 
is  harsh,  but  that  it  is  true.  A  scholar  is  a 
disciple  of  learning;  one  who  has  begun  to  love  V 
knowledge  for  its  own  gracious  and  liberating 
sake,  and  who  has  acquired  enough  of  it  in  his 
four  academic  years  to  begin  to  be  a  cultivated  ^ 
man.  But  am  I  wrong  in  saying  that  there  are 
not  many  undergraduates  who  answer  to  that 
definition.^  There  are  certainly  some  men  in 
every  college  class  who  already  love  learning  for 
its  own  sake,  and  their  number  is  steadily  in- 
creasing. It  might  be  well  for  the  boy  who  will 
not  seriously  work  his  mind  in  college,  and  who 
feels  that  he  ought  not  to  be  expected  or  com- 
pelled to  do  so,  to  realize,  now,  that  his  days  are 
numbered.  As  I  look  back  over  the  fourteen 
years  which  have  elapsed  since  my  own  graduat- 
ing from  Harvard,  the  two  changes  most  notice- 
able in  the  college  during  that  time  are  the 
growth  of  a  new  corporate  consciousness  in 
undergraduate  life,  and  the  increasing  intellectual 
seriousness,  coincident  with  the  stiffening  of  the 
college   course.     Formerly,   if   a  man   attended 

177 


THE  COLLEGE  COLUSE 

his  lectures  with  decent  regularity,  and  did  some 
hard  work  in  the  weeks  preceding  his  midyear 
and  final  examinations,  he  might  spend  the 
better  part  of  his  year  in  elegant  leisure,  and 
still  make  his  degree,  even  make  it  with  dis- 
tinction. But  now%  by  means  of  the  frequent 
conferences  and  quizzes  set  in  the  elementary 
courses,  and  the  large  number  of  theses  required 
in  more  advanced  work,  this  is  no  longer  true. 
The  minimum  of  intellectual  labor  which  a 
student  must  perform  to  maintain  his  under- 
graduate standing  is  much  larger  than  it  used 
to  be,  and  it  is  steadily  increasing. 

There  are,  then,  not  a  few  men  who  have 
deliberately  left  philistinism,  and  are  beginning 
to  live  in  the  realms  of  sweetness  and  light; 
but  most  undergraduates  don't  know  what 
*' philistinism"  means!  And,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  genuine  scholarship,  the  student  body 
separates  into  two  groups.  In  the  first  group, 
which  does  not,  I  think,  comprise  half  the  college, 
are  men  who  do  considerable  serious  intellectual 
work,  but  who  do  it  from  such  mistaken  motives, 
or  for  such  inadequate  ends,  that  they  cannot  be 
dignified  by  the  gentle  name  of  "scholar." 
These  men  are  either  "grinds"  or  "commer- 
cialists."  By  "grinds"  I  mean  men  who  value 
information  rather  than  the  human  insights,  the 

178 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

ideal  values,  the  enlarged  view  of  truth,  which 
may  be  gained  through  information,  or  who  value 
it  because  of  the  academic  standing,  the  personal 
position  which  it  gives  to  them.  They  make  no 
distinction  between  knowledge  and  wisdom,  and 
would  consider  an  immature  erudition  a  sufficient 
substitute  for  developed  personality.  They  be- 
come a  sort  of  walking  encyclopaedia,  an  irritating 
and  unhuman  compendium  of  ill-assorted  and 
unrelated  information.  They  are  not  springs, 
but  sponges;  the  depositories,  rather  than  the 
sources,  of  ideas.  They  are  full  of  other  people's 
thoughts,  but  they  are  hardly  thinkers.  They 
cultivate  no  wide  human  contacts  and  have  no 
clear  and  intelligent  idea  of  life  as  a  whole, 
neither  perceiving  the  end  which  they  should 
have  in  view  nor  the  just  means  whereby  to 
reach  it.  The  grind  has  certain  admirable 
qualities,  intellectual  conscience,  mental  energy, 
perseverance,  and  ambition  of  a  sort.  But,  for 
all  that,  the  grind  is  not  a  scholar. 

The  other  men  in  this  first  group  are  the  com- 
mercialists.  They  are  possessed  of  a  sound 
"business  sense"  — oh,  glorious  and  glorified 
phrase!  —  which  means,  in  simple  and  sincere 
English,  the  sense  of  the  value  of  money.  They 
have  been  sent  to  college  because  they  and  their 
parents  think  that,  on  the  whole,  it  offers  them 

179 


y 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

a  good  business  preparation,  which  means  that  it 
will  instruct  them  in  the  gentle  art  of  making 
money.  Hence  these  men  work  very  well  in 
certain  undergraduate  departments,  not  because 
they  are  interested  in  intellectual  ideals,  but 
because,  to  put  it  very  crudely,  they  feel  sure 
that  it  pays.  They  w^ould  choose,  during  their 
four  years,  therefore,  those  courses  whose  im- 
mediate utility  they  can  perceive.  They  want 
the  sort  of  learning  which  may  be  readily  cashed. 
Hence,  all  disciplines  of  indirect  value  are  dep- 
recated. The  so-called  cultural  courses  are 
not  popular.  The  classics  and  literature  seem 
futile.  Now,  these  men,  too,  have  certain  ad- 
mirable qualities;  energy,  ambition,  and  self- 
reliance,  and,  while  they  are  essentially  alien 
figures  in  the  college  of  liberal  arts,  they  are  much 
more  sinned  against  than  sinning.  For  they 
are  the  direct  products  of  our  American  life, 
with  its  practical  ingenuity,  its  mechanical 
interests,  its  opulent  materialism.  Like  the 
grinds,  however,  these  men,  though  often  good 
students,  are  not  scholars.  For  they  do  not 
love  learning  for  its  own  sake,  nor  perceive  the 
large  and  natural  ends  which  it  serves.  They 
have  not  seen  the  vision  which  learning  and 
religion  alike  induce,  that  the  real  values  of 
life  are  intangible  and  invisible,  that  the  precious 

180 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

ends  of  human  effort  are  spiritual.  They 
have  neither  this  gracious  spirit  nor  this  philo- 
sophic sense.  Having  means  more  to  them  than 
being. 

Thus  we  dispose  of  our  first  group,  and  ap- 
proach the  second,  and  immediately  we  yet 
further  descend.  For  some  of  the  men  in  this 
second  group  are  merely  "sports."  Probably 
you  know  what  the  " sport"  is.  He  is  the  elegant 
mendicant,  the  academic  beggar,  the  hanger-on 
to  the  fringes  of  undergraduate  life.  He  corre- 
sponds, in  our  world,  to  that  well-known  figure  in 
rural  districts,  whose  chief  function  in  life  is  to 
lounge  about  the  railway  station,  meditatively 
turning  a  wisp  of  hay  between  his  teeth,  watching 
the  trains  go  by.  He  is  apt  to  wear  somewhat 
exaggerated  clothes  and  to  have  a  somewhat 
exaggerated  manner.  He  represents  inconse- 
quent irresponsibility,  raised  to  the  7ith  power. 
President  Jordan  compares  him  to  that  other 
group  of  men  found  in  metropolitan  centers  who 
chiefly  support  the  city's  lamp-posts  while  their 
women  work  at  the  washtub  or  run  the  sewing- 
machine.  He  points  out  that,  like  them,  the 
sport  has  no  sense  of  responsibility  to  his  com- 
munity and  no  large  self-respect,  but  looks  upon 
time,  the  one  incalculably  precious  possession  of 
the  human  being,  as  something  to  be  got  rid  of; 

181 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

and  means  to  dispose  of  it  without  giving  any 
return  for  it. 

Now,  not  all  of  us  are  sports.  For,  while  all  of 
us  are  lazy,  laziness  being  an  almost  invariable 
accompaniment  of  rapidly  growing  youth,  most 
of  us  have  genuine  and  respectable  interests, 
upon  which  we  expend  a  great  deal  of  thought, 
will,  and  energy.  The  difficulty  with  most  boys 
is  not  in  getting  them  to  work  at  what  they  like, 
but  in  persuading  them  to  like  that  at  which  they 
ought  to  work.  And  the  trouble  is  that  most  of 
us  do  not  expend  our  time  and  selves,  in  the  four 
incomparable  years,  upon  the  things  for  which 
those  years  are  intended  and  from  which  we 
should  derive  our  largest  advantage.  Our  chief 
interests  are  physical;  the  intellectual  feebleness 
of  the  college  is  clearest  shown  in  the  grotesque 
exaggeration  of  athletic  interests.  This  is  both 
a  cause  and  effect  of  the  low  average  of  under- 
graduate intelligence,  but  chiefly,  I  think,  a 
cause.  I  am  aware  that,  like  King  Agag  before 
Samuel,  I  must  walk  delicately,  if  I  am  to 
approach  the  subject  of  athletics  when  writing 
for  undergraduates.  But  it  is  impossible  to 
ignore  it,  for  the  amount  of  time  and  effort 
which  athletics  absorb  in  the  modern  college  is 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  benefits  which  are 
gained  from  them.     And,  it  is  nothing  short  of 

182 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

degenerative  to  have  a  man  win  first-rate  stand- 
ing in  the  academic  community  on  grounds  and 
achievements  other  than  those  for  which  such  a 
community  primarily  stands.  It  has  almost  come 
to  the  pass,  to-day,  that  the  method  of  judging 
our  instructors,  or  any  older  person's  mental  or 
spiritual  ability,  is  to  find  out  what  impression 
they  may  have  made  upon  the  young  Hercules 
of  the  college,  or  whether,  in  their  own  youth, 
they  were  able  to  do  the  high  jump  or  to  put  the 
shot.  At  a  leading  university  of  the  Middle 
West,  last  winter,  I  heard  an  announcement  given 
by  one  of  the  deans  of  the  institution  to  the 
undergraduate  audience  which  a  few  moments 
afterward  I  was  to  address.  The  dean  was 
announcing  that  a  young  and  able  missionary 
leader  was  to  speak  at  the  university  during 
Holy  Week,  and  he  desired  to  commend  him  to 
a  large  and  favorable  hearing.  What  w^as  his 
method  of  presenting  him  to  the  audience.'^  He 
informed  them  that  at  a  recent  series  of  meetings, 
held  by  the  speaker  in  question  in  an  Eastern 
college,  every  member  of  the  football  team  had 
been  won  over!  Well,  what  more  could  one  ask? 
What  better  method  is  there  to  use,  in  a  great 
university,  when  commending  a  teacher  and  a 
scholar,  than  to  say  that  the  members  of  the 
Eleven  have  assured  his  success,  by  graciously 

183 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

signifying,  concerning  him,  their  sovereign  appro- 
vaL^  Again,  the  general  absorption  in  athletics 
is  detrimental  to  the  genuine  intellectual  interests 
of  the  college,  not  so  much  through  the  athletes 
themselves,  for  they  do  get  a  vigorous  discipline 
in  things  moral  and  physical,  but  through  the 
mass  of  undergraduate  onlookers,  who  take  out 
their  athletics  chiefly  by  sitting  on  the  bleachers 
during  the  contest  and  by  wasting  time  discuss- 
ing the  game  afterward.  All  young  men  appear 
to  be  natural  gossips,  and  to  enjoy  inconsequent 
small  talk  and  the  bandying  about  of  every  sort 
of  undergraduate  rumor.  But  the  amount  of 
time  that  groups  of  men  will  spend  going  over 
and  over,  with  wearisome  iteration,  every  detail 
of  recent  athletic  contests,  would  really  be  in- 
credible to  any  one  who  had  not  observed  it  for 
himself.  Quite  recently  I  traveled  by  chance  for 
some  four  hours  in  a  Pullman  car  with  a  group  of 
young  men,  most  of  whom  I  knew,  who  were 
returning  on  the  day  before  graduation  to  their 
own  college  from  another  institution,  where  they 
had  either  been  spectators  or  participants  in  a 
baseball  game.  They  spent  the  entire  afternoon, 
while  on  the  train,  in  no  other  occupation  except 
that  of  calculating  batting  averages  and  rehears- 
ing the  separate  plays  of  their  classmates  of  the 
day  before.     Not  much  can  be  said  in  defense 

184 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

of  this  vicarious  athletic  activity.  Certainly,  it 
should  always  come  second  in  a  normal  under-  >  i 
graduate  career,  as  a  part  of  the  relaxation  from  \| 
real  intellectual  pursuits.  But,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  it  often  comes  first,  and  studies  must  get  \/ 
what  they  can  of  the  time  and  energy  which  are 
left.  Hence  so  many  men  crowd  into  the  easier 
courses;  hence  it  is  fashionable  to  depreciate 
learning,  and  not  good  form  to  be  a  cultivated 
person.  There  is,  of  course,  a  very  vivid  and 
spectacular  side  to  these  athletic  interests,  and 
it  is  not  hard  to  understand  why  they  dominate 
undergraduate  imagination.  There  is,  for  in- 
stance, a  new  figure  who  has  appeared  in  the 
college  world  since  my  day,  —  the  cheer  leader; 
and  even  as  the  rabbit  is  charmed  by  the  eye 
of  the  snake,  so  do  we  older  men  regard  him, 
fascinated,  and  with  awe.  He  is  a  delirious 
person,  curveting  and  capering  up  and  down  the 
side  lines  like  any  faun,  his  nimble  feet  spurning 
the  ground.  With  sublime  self-abnegation  he 
turns  his  back  upon  the  heroes  of  the  gridiron. 
Wrath  and  zeal  are  shining  in  his  eyes,  exhorting 
passion  quivers  on  his  lips,  while  his  wildly 
waving  arms  implore,  demand,  create  the  vocal 
thunders  that  sweep  along  the  serried  ranks  of  the 
bleachers,  from  the  throats  of  his  admiring  peers ! 
Who  would  not  go  to  any  college,  and  submit  to 

185 


4 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

almost  any  intellectual  discipline,  if  he  might 
attain  to  such  a  power?  What  is  a  Phi  Beta 
Kappa  Key  beside  it?  But  when  the  tumult  and 
the  shouting  die,  the  solemn  pity  of  it  all  remains, 
that  many  a  youth  comes  of  age  and  is  graduated 
from  college  with  a  man's  body  and  a  boy's  mind. 
Hence  it  is  true  that  most  of  us  are  frankly 
illiterate,  and  we  are  graduated  illiterate.  I 
don't  mean  by  that  that  we  are  unable  to  read  or 
write,  or  to  express  ourselves  after  a  rough-and- 
ready  fashion.  I  mean  that  most  of  us,  as 
scholars,  are  arrant  failures,  because  we  are 
ignorant  of  good  literature,  and  incapable  of 
conveying  our  thoughts  with  elegance  or  lucidity 
or  precision.  A  letter  from  an  undergraduate 
in  a  leading  Eastern  university,  written  last 
winter,  illustrates  the  point.  He  was  writing 
home  on  a  Sunday  afternoon,  and  referring  to 
the  sermon  preached  that  morning  before  the 
university,  by  perhaps  the  most  distinguished 
public  speaker  now  residing  in  New  York  City. 
The  boy's  appreciation  of  this  really  notable 
man  was  a  masterpiece  of  discriminating  insight 
and  felicitous  expression.  He  wrote:  "We  had 
a  guy  down  here  this  morning  from  New  York, 
who  preached  forty  minutes.  Gee,  he  was 
rotten!"  Now,  this  is  the  language  one  might 
expect  from  the  East-Side  gamin.     It  represents 

186 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

gross  illiteracy  in  an  undergraduate.  Much  of 
the  profanity  which  is  very  common  among 
students,  many,  also,  of  the  more  extreme  forms 
of  slang  which  enhven  their  conversations,  may 
be  traced  to  the  same  cause.  They  are  not  due 
so  much  to  viciousness  or  native  vulgarity  as  to 
undeveloped  intelligence.  The  student  is  unable 
to  express  himself  clearly  and  simply,  and  there- 
fore falls  back  on  ancient  expletives  and  vivid 
emotional  symbols.  The  chief  impression  which 
a  conversation  with  a  typical  undergraduate 
leaves  on  the  listener  is  of  the  inchoate  condition 
of  the  boy's  mind.  This  inability  to  express 
himself  is,  in  a  great  measure,  due  to  his  igno- 
rance of  English,  to  say  nothing  of  European, 
letters.  Dean  West  has  pointed  out  that  the 
majority  of  college  students  are  not  familiar  with 
the  commonplaces  of  literary  information;  with 
the  standard  books  of  history,  fiction,  and  verse. 
How  much  do  they  even  know  of  that  greatest 
of  all  books  in  our  English  tongue,  which  records 
the  high-water  mark  of  our  spoken  language  — 
the  King  James  Version  of  the  Bible. '^  I  once 
asked  a  boy  in  my  Freshman  Bible  class,  "Who 
was  Hagar.^"  and  he  gently  repHed,  "One  of  the 
twelve  Apostles."  And  so  that  incomparable 
record  of  human  experience,  and  masterpiece  of 
sober,  yet  warm  and  vivid  English,  together  with 

187 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

all  the  treasure  of  thought  and  emotion  which  our 
larger  literature  comprehends,  all,  is  essentially 
unknown. 

This  is  surely  one  reason  why  there  appears  to 
be  an  increasing  impoverishment  of  personality 
in  the  undergraduate'  body.  Individualities  are 
not  developed;  there  are  fewer  notable  and 
outstanding  figures.  I  think  it  is  chiefly  due  to 
the  illiteracy.  Some  of  us  do,  indeed,  acquire 
considerable  information  in  college,  but  not  the 
grace  and  sensitiveness,  the  breadth  and  insight 
which  should  issue  from  it.  No  man  can  be 
called  a  scholar,  or  be  said  to  have  succeeded  as 
an  undergraduate,  or  to  have  utilized  his  most 
precious  opportunities,  who  has  failed  to  gain 
something  of  that  spiritual  breeding,  that  quick 
and  varied  appreciation,  that  adaptability  to 
men  and  surroundings,  that  sane  and  tolerant 
knowledge  of  human  life  which  only  wide  ac- 
quaintance with  letters  can  bring  to  youth. 
But  we  read,  instead  of  literature,  the  sporting 
page  of  the  newspaper,  the  ten-cent  magazines, 
the  current  and  ephemeral  fiction.  Do  we 
expect  that  learning  and  culture  are  to  be  found 
between  the  pages  of  the  short  story  in  "Mun- 
sey's"  and  "McClure's"?  Are  we  supposed,  in 
college,  to  study  the  humanities  and  read  the 
classics,   to  acquaint  ourselves   w^ith  books   on 

188 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

pliilosophy  and  science,  only  to  that  limited 
extent  which  will  enable  us  to  gain  pass-marks 
in  a  certain  number  of  courses,  and  to  issue 
respectably  from  our  Alma  Mater?  VfLen  one 
considers  the  variety  of  intellectual  interests 
thrust  upon  us  all  to-day,  the  paucity  and 
poverty  of  intellectual  life  in  college,  the  intel- 
lectual frugality  of  undergraduate  conversation, 
is  appalling.  There  is  little  intelligent  discussion 
of  significant  contemporary  themes,  whether  in 
politics  or  economics  or  ethics.  The  under- 
graduates of  to-day  know  some  facts,  but  the 
have  few  ideas.  They  can  talk  quite  glibly  on 
things,  but  are  confused  in  the  realm  of  prin- 
ciples, and  are  notably  unable  to  trace  effects 
to  their  just  causes.  The  childish  and  bizarre 
motives  which  the  average  undergraduate  will 
assign  to  his  parents,  his  minister,  his  president 
and  his  faculty,  for  their  deeds,  betray  an  utter 
absence  in  him  of  just  observation  or  the  power 
to  make  rational  deductions. 

This,  then,  is  what  I  mean  by  illiteracy.  And 
it  is  not  only  a  severe  but  it  is  a  humiliating 
indictment  to  bring  against  the  modern  collegian. 
And  yet,  is  the  picture  which  it  presents  so  very 
different  from  the  actual  undergraduate  life  as 
you  yourselves  live  it.^  What  is  the  goal  of  your 
college  days?    Is  n't  it  to  be  active  and  cheerful 

189 


\J 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

and  energetic,  and  to  have  a  good  time?  Is  n't 
it  to  avoid  any  long-continued  intellectual  re- 
sponsibility, and  not  to  think  too  seriously  (lest 
you  be  a  highbrow!),  and  say  you  are  never 
young  but  once,  and  enjoy  yourself?  Is  n't  it 
to  gain  in  college  a  smattering  of  knowledge  upon 
a  number  of  secondary  subjects,  to  dip  into  the 
clever  and  popular  publications  of  the  moment, 
to  use,  with  complacent  facility,  the  particular 
patter  of  your  group  or  class?  Is  n't  it  to  wear, 
with  scrupulous  exactness,  the  precise  garment 
which  fashion  demands  and  which  your  tailors 
will  trust  you  with,  to  cheer  with  superb  noise 
at  the  games,  and  to  be  adept  in  sitting  on 
bleachers?  Is  n't  it,  in  vacation  time,  to  see  the 
actor  and  hear  the  singer  of  the  moment,  and  to 
know^  the  names,  or  yet  better  the  persons,  of 
famous  —  or  infamous  —  people?  That  is  an 
exaggerated  picture,  but  it  is  just  true  enough  to 
be  justifiable.  It  is  this  absence  of  intellectual 
vigor,  this  commonplaceness  of  mental  life,  this 
lack  of  personal  distinction,  which  is  a  serious 
indictment  of  the  college.  In  the  realm  of  the 
intellect  it  is  the  easy  rather  than  the  hard 
things,  the  pleasant  rather  than  the  best  things, 
that  we  desire.  There  is  a  story  current  at 
Harvard,  told  of  the  days  when  the  elective 
system  was  in  full  swing.     I  do  not  know  whether 

190 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

it  be  true,  but  it  certainly  illustrates  the  truth  of 
the  extent  to  which  the  student  will  carry  this 
intellectual  living  along  the  lines  of  least  re- 
sistance —  unless  the  authorities  prevent  him. 
A  student  presented  to  the  dean  for  his  approval 
a  schedule  of  unrelated  and  widely  scattered 
courses.  The  dean  inquired  what  had  been  the 
principle  of  choice  in  making  up  the  extraordinary 
selection.  The  young  scholar  answered,  "Well, 
there  is  n't  any  course  here  which  comes  before 
ten  o'clock  in  the  morning,  or  is  up  more  than  > 
one  flight  of  stairs."  Such  a  man,  it  may  be  said  \  / 
in  passing,  offers  the  best  of  arguments  for  a 
return  to  a  semi-prescribed  curriculum. 

Now,  one  would  expect  that  such  a  situation, 
being  so  obviously  a  perversion,  would  attract 
critical  and  solicitous  attention.  The  American 
college  represents  a  prodigious  material  invest- 
ment. The  amount  of  capital  tied  up  in  educa- 
tion in  this  country  is  unprecedented.  When  we 
contemplate  the  widespread  and  practical  in- 
terest in  schools  and  universities  which  the 
country  manifests,  and  when  we  see  on  com- 
mencement day  what  is  the  result  of  it  all,  we 
might  expect  that  somebody  would  be  putting 
the  college  of  liberal  arts  on  trial  and  demanding 
that  it  justify  its  existence.  Nor  is  that  expec- 
tation unwarranted.     That  is  precisely  what  the 

191 


M 


THE  COLLEGE  COLTRSE 

American  public  is  now  beginning  to  do.  I  am 
sure  the  undergraduate  body  to-day  utterly  fails 
to  realize  the  significance  and  the  volume  of 
criticism  which  is  now  being  directed  against 
the  college.  I  shall  have  amply  succeeded  in 
this  chapter  if  I  can  assure  you  of  one  thing,  and 
make  you  feel  its  ensuing  responsibility.  Your 
college,  to-day,  is  under  fire;  it  is  being  asked  to 
show  better  reasons  than  it  can  now  show  for 
the  time  and  money  and  human  genius  which  are 
devoted  to  it.  Professor  Lockwood,  in  his  recent 
compilation  of  addresses,  called  "The  Freshman 
and  his  College,"  quotes  men  of  standing  and 
ability  and  wide  knowledge  of  the  world,  who 
variously  allude  to  the  college  as  "a  club  of  idling 
classes;  a  training-school  for  shamming  and 
shirking;  the  most  gigantic  illusion  of  the  age." 
These  men  believe  that  a  college  diploma  rarely 
assures  intellectual  discipline.  The  editor  of  a 
New  York  daily  affirms  that  students  now  get 
from  the  college  life  "little  but  educational  dis- 
advantages." In  an  article  on  "What  is  Wrong 
with  the  College,"  appearing  in  the  "Century" 
for  May,  1914,  occurs  the  following  paragraph:  — 
"  The  Incubus  of  the  Idle  Student.  Looked 
at  in  this  light,  we  see  how  specious  are  the 
arguments  which  have  led  us  to  tolerate  the 
college  idler  so  long.     Clinging  to  the  remote 

192 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

liope  of  his  regeneration,  we  have  permitted  him 
to  contaminate  hundreds  with  the  virus  of  in- 
tellectual listlessness.  The  time  for  tolerance  is 
past.  War  measures  are  now  necessary.  The 
first  and  crying  need  of  the  American  college 
to-day  is  the  ejection,  the  ruthless  ejection,  of 
the  man  with  the  idle  mind.  He  is  the  leper  of 
college  society." 

Oxford  University  looks  somewhat  askance  at 
the  Rhodes  scholars,  and  finds  American  youth 
brilliant,  but  devoid  of  intellectual  persistency 
and  without  those  broad  scholastic  foundations 
which  are  absolutely  essential  to  first-rate  ad- 
vanced work.  International  experts  in  education 
tell  us  that  our  graduates  are  not  as  ripe  and 
fit  for  professional  study  at  twenty-three  as 
German  students  are  at  the  age  of  twenty. 
Business  men  complain  that  the  college  grad- 
uate is  neither  a  trained  nor  a  serious  worker. 
Mr.  Abraham  Flexner,  in  his  bitterly  resented 
but  brilliant  book  on  the  "American  College" 
says:  ''A  youth  may  win  his  degree  to-day  on 
a  showing  that  would  in  an  oflSce  cost  him 
his  desk." 

President  Pritchett,  of  the  Carnegie  Founda- 
tion for  the  Advancement  of  Teaching,  who  is  a 
very  potent  figure  in  the  academic  world  of  our 
time,    says:     "The    two    objections    generally 

193 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

brought  against  the  college  to-day  are  vagueness 
of  aim  and  lack  of  intellectual  stamina."  When 
it  was  announced  that  Mr.  Lowell  had  accepted 
the  presidency  of  Harvard  University,  the 
undergraduates  gathered,  one  evening  before  his 
house,  and,  in  responding  to  their  greeting,  he 
made  an  impromptu  speech.  In  that  informal 
talk  he  said  certain  things  which  quite  clearly 
indicated  his  determination  to  reinstate  scholar- 
ship as  a  primary  aim  in  at  least  one  American 
college.  He  said:  "You  are  come  here  to  be 
educated.  The  educated  youth  is  n't  merely  he 
who  can  answer  questions.  He  is  the  man  w^ho 
knows  what  are  the  questions  that  need  to  be 
answered."  And  he  said  another  thing  that  will 
not  easily  be  forgotten:  "During  my  administra- 
tion, the  head  of  the  college  will  not  be  caring 
about  what  you  want,  but  about  what  you 
think."  In  this  connection  it  may  not  be 
inappropriate  to  quote  the  story  told  of  the 
undergraduate  who  attended  one  of  Mr.  Lowell's 
Sunday  afternoon  receptions.  As  he  was  leaving, 
the  President  very  kindly  said,  "How  do  you 
find  your  work  going.?"  The  boy  answered 
nonchalantly,  "Oh,  I  think  very  well,  sir.  I 
guess  I  am  getting  gentleman's  grades."  "Ah," 
said  Mr.  Lowell,  looking  at  him,  "then  you 
must  be  getting  either  A's  or  E's.     A  gentleman 

194 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

either  does  his  very  best  or  he  does  n't  pretend 
to  do  anything." 

If,  therefore,  you  ask  the  question,  "Is  scholar- 
ship a  prime  essential  in  the  college?"  I  should 
answer  very  soberly  and  sincerely  that  I  believe 
the  continued  existence  of  the  college  of  liberal 
arts  in  New  England  depends  upon  a  marked 
improvement  in  undergraduate  learning.  For 
four  years  you  are  non-producers  there.  The 
state  and  nation  subsidize  your  institution,  de- 
manding no  taxes  from  it,  and  the  community 
supports  you.  It  is  not  done  to  give  you  four 
more  long  vacations.  It  is  not  done  in  order  to 
make  you  an  expert  in  either  social  or  athletic 
activities.  It  is  not  done  that  you  may  have  a 
winter  watering-place  which  is  just  touched  with 
an  academic  flavor.  It  is  done  because  the  na- 
tion needs  the  services  of  a  trained  intelligence 
and  a  mature  mind,  and  is  willing  to  support 
you  for  a  while  for  the  express  purpose  that 
you  may  gain  these  things  and  issue  from  the 
college  mental  and  moral  leaders  in  your  com- 
munity. Expert  service,  to  be  rendered  on  the 
basis  of  the  training  of  these  four  years,  is  the 
only  justification  of  any  of  our  colleges. 

This  Republic  is  facing  social  and  industrial 
problems,  economic,  moral  and  religious  ques- 
tions, which  are  graver  and  more  pressing  than 

195 


xf 


(\J 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

any  which  it  has  ever  faced  before  in  its  history. 
It  is,  as  some  one  has  said,  being  pKmdered  by 
the  rich  and  robbed  by  the  poor,  while  the  trusts 
and  unions  play  the  tyrant  over  both.  The 
nation  looks  to  its  young,  educated  men  to  lead 
it  out  of  the  wilderness.  It  looks  to  you  to  be 
prime  factors  in  the  creation  of  what  is  our 
greatest  social  need  to-day  —  a  sober  and  re- 
sponsible public  opinion.  The  very  stress  of 
present  circumstances  is  making  America  de- 
mand that  a  college  man  shall  be  what  he  purports 
to  be  —  a  person  of  trained  intelligence  and  some 
expert  knowledge,  who  is  able  to  bring  to  bear, 
at  any  time,  on  any  given  problem,  the  concen- 
trated and  continued  power  of  a  well-furnished 
and  disciplined  mind.  Again,  the  handwriting 
is  appearing,  over  against  the  candlestick  on 
the  wall  of  the  king's  palace.  And  two  things 
are  being  asked  of  the  Chaldeans,  the  learned 
men  of  the  community:  first,  that  they  read  the 
writing,  and  then,  having  read  it,  that  they  be 
able  to  give  the  interpretation  thereof. 

Do  not  suppose,  then,  that  loyalty  to  your 
institution  means  singing  and  shouting  and 
cheering,  or  the  perpetuation  of  picturesque 
barbarities,  themselves  only  an  expression  of 
communal  undergraduate  life  when  it  had  no 
normal  outlet  for  physical  energy  in  organized 

196 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

athletics.  The  state,  the  nation,  the  fathers  and 
mothers  of  the  boys  who  are  to  come  here  after 
you,  care  next  to  nothing  for  all  that.  They  are 
concerned  with  graver,  more  real  and  difficult 
things.  What  they  want  to  know  is,  does  the 
college  teach  you  how  to  think  straight?  Can 
it  give  you  a  rewarding  method  of  work?  Do 
you  learn  mental  concentration  there?  Are  you 
to  graduate  with  a  diploma  that  signifies  evident 
and  available  intellectual  power?  If  you  cannot 
answer  these  questions  in  the  affirmative,  then 
you  are,  in  sober  truth,  among  your  Alma  Mater's 
most  disloyal  sons. 

You  owe  it,  then,  to  your  college,  as  the  most 
necessary  element  of  your  loyalty  to  her,  that 
you  address  yourself  to  acquiring  that  knowledge 
of  the  arts  and  sciences  which  shall  make  you  y 
a  well-informed  and  clearly  thinking  being.  V 
You  owe  it  no  less,  to  yourself  and  to  the  nation, 
to  accept  the  austere  delights  and  the  fine  satis- 
factions of  the  disciplined  mind  and  cultivated 
spirit.  Your  undergraduate  years  offer  you 
the  priceless  opportunity  to  relinquish  obvious, 
immediate,  and  practical  endeavors,  and  to 
acquaint  yourselves  with  those  great  realms  of 
thought  and  feeling  which  have  nothing  directly 
to  do  with  the  material  and  money-getting  exist- 
ence, but  have  everything  to  do  with  the  em- 

197 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

powering  and  liberating  of  your  own  spirit,  since 
they  reveal  to  you  the  mind  and  the  heart  of  man 
at  their  best  estate.  One  is  constrained  to  plead 
with  you  to  devote  yourselves  again  to  the 
humanities  before,  sent  out  from  the  sheltering 
academic  walls,  you  essay  the  delicate  and  diflS- 
cult  business  of  living  as  a  producer  and  a  friend, 
a  husband  and  a  father,  among  your  fellow 
human  beings.  2fhe  college  does  not  exist  to 
teach  you  a  busmess  or  a  trade,  but  to  show  you 
how  to  apply  correctly  whatever  business  you 
take  up,  and  most  of  all,  how  to  succeed  in  the 
business  of  living.  You  should,  therefore,  be 
steeped  in  the  great  literatures  which  are  the 
record  of  the  noblest  emotion,  the  clearest 
thinking,  of  the  race.  You  should  read  your 
iEschylus  and  Euripides  and  Sophocles  —  those 
men,  whose  somber  and  monumental  dramas 
reveal  the  turbid  ebb  and  flow  in  men's  miserable 
hearts.  You  should  be  at  home  in  the  great 
revival  of  arts  and  letters  of  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  and  should  know  your  Pe- 
trarch and  Dante,  your  Boccaccio  and  Tasso  and 
Vasari.  You  should  know  the  great  biographies 
and  autobiographies  of  Europe,  and  stories  like 
"Gil  Bias."  Most  of  all,  you  should  read  the 
Elizabethan  dramatists,  acquainting  yourself 
with  those  frank  and  vigorous  pictures  of  human 

198 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

life,  set  forth  in  all  the  lusty  ease  of  their  fine 
English.  "Tom  Jones"  should  lie  upon  your 
study  desk,  as  it  lay  upon  Lowell's,  because,  as 
Thackeray  said,  "No  one  since  Fielding  has  dared 
to  draw  a  man  as  he  is."  And  you  ought  to  read 
Balzac,  Hugo,  and  Dumas,  because  theirs  is  the 
literature  which  is  impacted  with  the  very  blood 
and  bone  of  human  experience,  and  brings  you 
close  to  the  heart  of  a  man.  It  is  out  of  this  wide 
and  deep  interest  in  the  gracious  and  the  beauti- 
ful, the  vivid  and  the  picturesque  in  life,  that 
men  grow  to  appreciate  all  sorts  and  kinds  of 
their  fellow  men.  This  w^ill  stimulate  the  imagi- 
nation, will  keep  you  from  mental  commonplace- 
ness,  make  articulate  your  spirit,  free  you  from 
the  narrow  range  of  interests  and  sympathies 
which  is  the  lot  of  uneducated  men.  Thus 
will  you  put  yourself  in  sympathy  with  the  time 
spirit  and  with  those  frail  contemporary  lives 
that  are  borne  along  its  current.  Thus  wall 
your  thought  spring  forth  on  high  levels,  inter- 
preting, not  condemning,  guiding,  not  repressing, 
assuaging,  not  exploiting,  the  multiform  desires 
of  men. 

Here  is  some  faint  picture  of  the  sort  of 
gracious  intellectual  interests  w^hich  you  would 
naturally  have  were  you  scholarly  inclined,  which 
you  must  have  if  you  are  to  do  your  duty  by 

199 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

yourself,  your  college,  and  your  nation.  It  may 
seem  to  you  that  I  have  been  unfair  to  the  under- 
graduate in  these  pages,  and  that  the  picture  I 
have  drawn  of  your  activities  is  less  a  portrait 
than  a  caricature.  But  it  is  a  good  thing  for  you 
to  perceive  just  how  those  activities  may  appear 
when  they  are  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of 
that  older  and  more  responsible  portion  of  the 
community  upon  which  both  you  and  your  in- 
stitution depend.  I  am  not  advocating  turning 
the  college  into  a  community  of  immature 
scholastics,  nor  abolishing  its  social  activities  or 
its  vigorous  physical  delights.  I  believe  in  these 
things  profoundly,  and  myself  enjoy  them  im- 
/  mensely.  They  have  a  natural  and  important 
place  in  your  lives,  and  in  all  normal  lives.  I  am 
only  appealing  for  a  just  scale  of  values,  asking 
you  to  put  first  things  first,  and  casting  no 
reproach  upon  pleasure  nor  depreciating  in  the 
slightest  degree  all  the  joy  that  can  be  crowded 
into  a  human  life.  All  of  it  which  justly  comes 
your  way  will  be  none  too  much.  Only  the 
pleasures  which  are  adequate  and  worthy  for  you, 
the  elect  youth  of  the  Republic,  are  not  the  idle 
but  the  achieved  pleasures;  not  the  easy  but 
the  difficult  joys;  those  deep  and  abiding  satisfac- 
tions which  come  from  intellectual  self-mastery, 
from  winning  the  battles  of  the  mind.     What 

200 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

you  should  enjoy  most  is  victory  in  the  fight 
against  intellectual  sloth,  mental  trivialities,  easy- 
going indulgence. 

Therefore,  one  ventures  to  plead  with  you  to 
be  ashamed  of  illiteracy  and  ambitious  to  exercise 
your  minds  and  to  know  the  truth.  Therefore, 
one  ventures  to  remind  you  that  the  permanent 
and  central  aim  of  college  life  can  be  nothing  less 
precious  or  difficult  than  the  acquirement  of  in- 
tellectual capacity.  This  is  n't  the  poor  ability 
of  the  grind  to  perform  a  particular  mechanical 
thing  in  a  prescribed,  particular  way.  It's  the 
power  of  focusing  on  any  intellectual  problem  the 
full  force  of  a  trained  intelligence.  And  it  is  pre- 
cisely this  power  which  the  courses  which  are 
taught  in  a  college  of  liberal  arts  can  and  do 
develop.  I  have  no  doubt  much  of  your  work 
there  seems  to  you  remote  and  impractical;  that 
it  seems  like  a  wasting  of  time  to  put  energy  and 
person  into  the  acquiring  of  knowledge,  the  learn- 
ing of  formulae,  which  you  never  expect  to  use 
directly  when  you  go  out  into,  let  us  say,  the 
business  world.  Yet  it  is  just  here  that  the  un- 
dergraduate makes  his  mistake.  All  these  disci- 
plinary and  cultural  studies  of  the  classical  course 
are  vastly  more  practical  than  we  are  willing  to 
admit.  The  study  of  the  binomial  theorem  is 
visibly  and  directly  of  no  use  in  brokerage  or 

201 


THE  COLLEGE  COLUSE 

banking.  Yet,  as  Professor  Leacock,  of  McGill 
University,  has  pointed  out,  "One  who  has  mas- 
tered it  will  find  it  easier  to  appear  promptly  at 
nine  o'clock  in  the  morning,  to  attend  to  what  is 
said  to  him,  to  understand  his  own  ignorance  and 
do  his  best  to  remove  it,  than  one  who  has  never 
seen  the  inside  of  an  algebra."  Most  boys  feel 
it  unnecessary,  to-day,  to  gain  or  maintain  a 
thorough  acquaintance  with  the  Greek  and  Latin 
tongues,  nor  can  they  see  how  such  acquirement 
is  related  to  our  modern  world.  Yet  the  mastery 
of  these  languages  bears  directly  upon  four  of  the 
great  professions,  all  of  which  are  attracting  an 
increasing  number  of  men,  to-day,  into  their  ranks 
—  those  of  the  ministry,  of  law,  of  journalism,  and 
of  politics.  In  all  these  fields,  men  must  be  able 
to  express  themselves  before  their  fellow  men  with 
accuracy,  force,  and  ease.  They  must  be  able, 
not  only  to  think  on  their  feet,  but  to  transmit 
their  thoughts  with  precision  and  effectiveness. 
Therefore,  to  them  the  knowledge  of  the  great 
tongues  from  which  our  English  language  springs, 
the  mastery  of  the  Greek  and  Latin  derivatives  of 
our  common  speech,  which  enables  them  to  dis- 
tinguish subtle  differences  between  words,  that 
are  apparent  synonyms,  and  to  arouse  the 
imagination  of  their  hearers  by  using  words  with 
the  sense  of  their  background,  their  associations, 

202 


IS  LEARNING  ESSENTIAL? 

and  connotations,  is  of  prime  importance.  Truly 
the  immediate  future  will  need  what  all  the  past 
has  needed  —  philosophers  and  statesmen,  and 
its  own  literature,  and  a  culture  able  to  enrich 
and  ennoble  life  as  well  as  to  serve  its  conven- 
iences. Therefore,  for  the  serious  student  and  for 
his  generation  the  college  can  do  so  much  more 
and  better  than  the  mere  fitting  him  for  a  special 
career  if  it  prescribes  those  studies  which  offer 
a  comprehensive  view  of  the  knowledge  which 
is  to  be  most  serviceable  to  the  whole  of  his  after 
life,  which  is  to  insure  the  real  development  of 
the  man  and  the  true  freedom  of  the  human 
spirit. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

We  are  come,  to  my  regret,  to  the  last  of  our 
friendly  and  informal  talks  on  undergraduate 
problems.  But  I  am  rejoicing,  in  the  fascinating 
if  elusive  theme  which  is  to  occupy  us  in  it, 
namely,  the  aesthetic  problem  of  the  college. 
Well  I  know  that  vague  feelings  of  discomfort 
arise  in  the  undergraduate  breast  when  such  a 
topic  is  announced.  It  represents  rather  a 
strange  and  alien  subject  for  you,  removed  from 
the  everyday  area  of  undergraduate  experience. 
Yet  I  think  it  has  a  place  in  the  discussion  of 
college  problems,  for  it  must  not  be  forgotten 
that  in  our  country  you  are  to  be  called  upon  to 
set  standards  as  well  as  to  transmit  ideas  for 
your  generation. 

And  this  office  of  yours  is  the  more  important, 
because,  as  perhaps  not  all  of  us  realize,  a  distinct 
decline  in  taste  has  been  one  of  the  features  of 
the  history  of  New  England  during  the  pre- 
ceding century.  Even  as  the  Greeks  who 
belonged  to  the  flower  of  Attic  civilization,  the 
Athenians  of  the  days  of  Phidias  and  Pericles, 
should  they  be  able  to  visit  an  American  city, 

204 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

would  be  appalled  beyond  measure  at  the  hideous 
noise,  the  garish  lights,  the  oddly  contrasted 
colors,  which  make  up  the  crude  and  inchoate 
expressions  of  our  communal  life,  and  would  con- 
sider our  civilization  merely  a  complicated  bar- 
barism, so,  I  fancy,  our  colonial  forbears,  if  they 
could  return  at  this  moment,  would  find  that 
their  descendants  had  indeed  progressed  in 
economic  wealth  and  material  comforts,  but  that 
they  had  quite  retrogressed  in. matters  of  appre- 
ciation and  taste.  We  fail  to  remember  that  the 
early  settlements  along  the  Atlantic  seacoast, 
primitive  as  they  were  and  embosomed  in  a 
savage  wilderness,  nevertheless  perpetuated  many 
of  the  aristocratic  traditions  and  standards  of 
that  incomparable  English  life  from  which  they 
were  derived.  This  was  strikingly  evidenced  in 
their  architecture,  that  colonial  modification  of 
the  Georgian  type  which  the  new  building 
material,  wood,  and  the  new  climatic  and  social 
conditions  of  the  settlements  brought  about. 
In  few  places  are  there  to  be  found  better  com- 
posed, more  stately  buildings  than,  let  us  say, 
GriflSn  Hall,  at  Williams  College,  with  its  deli- 
cately penciled  front,  or  the  ancient  colonial 
State  House  fronting  State  Street  in  Boston,  a 
building  which,  with  the  simplest  material  and 
the  fewest  lines,  achieves  an  extraordinary  effect 

205 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

of  daintiness  and  grace.  Nowhere  is  there  a 
church-tower  more  hght  and  airy  and  upw^ard- 
reaching  than  the  belfry,  surmounted  by  its 
double-storied  lantern  and  spire,  which  presides, 
at  Park  Street  corner,  over  Boston  Common. 
And  nowhere  are  there  domestic  dwellings  which 
give  more  happily  the  impression  of  stateliness 
and  hospitality,  of  dignity  and  simplicity,  than 
do  such  mansions  as  the  Craigie  house  in  Cam- 
bridge, or  the  presidents'  houses  at  Amherst  and 
Williams  Colleges.  These  latter,  indeed,  are  ex- 
pressions of  post-colonial  life,  but  derive  their 
beauty  from  colonial  influence  and  tradition. 
In  the  manual  and  decorative  arts,  as  well,  the 
early  days  of  the  American  colonies  saw  truly 
notable  achievements.  The  colonial  reproduc- 
tions of  the  Chippendale,  Adam,  Sheraton,  and 
Heppelwhite  models  of  furniture,  the  delicately 
carved  woodwork  wherewith  the  colonial  houses 
were  adorned,  the  Sheffield  plate,  the  engraved 
silver,  the  festooned  and  rose-sprigged  china  of 
the  period  —  all  these  mark  expressions  of  the 
decorative  impulse  which  in  their  elegant  simplic- 
ity it  would  be  hard  to  excel  in  any  time  or  place. 
Moreover,  the  manners  and  conversation  of  the 
time  also  had  their  touch  of  an  Old-World 
formality  and  stateliness  which  is  quaintly  pre- 
served for  us  in  the  epistolatory  writings  ofthe 

206 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

day.  The  president  of  at  least  one  ancient 
institution  of  learning  in  New  England,  in  signing 
the  official  documents  of  his  university,  still 
retains  the  formal  and  gracious  superscription 
of  our  early  forbears,  and  inscribes  himself, 
"Your  most  obedient  and  humble  servant." 

I  think  it  to  be  true,  therefore,  that  the  colonial 
college,  which  was  part  and  parcel  of  the  life  of 
the  time,  for  all  its  primitive  equipment,  and 
the  high-school  character  of  its  teaching,  was  a 
much  more  cultivated  and  sophisticated  insti- 
tution than  we  are  apt  to  consider  it,  and  the 
level  of  taste  among  undergraduates  was  con- 
siderably higher  than  we  are  wont  to  suppose. 
For  the  colonial  colleges  were  not  the  first 
hesitant  reacliings-out  after  a  cultivated  life  by 
a  primitive  community.  They  were  the  deliber- 
ate continuation  on  the  part  of  English-bred  men 
and  women  of  that  aristocratic  tradition  upon 
which  the  colleges  across  the  sea  were  founded. 
They  were  established  as  factors  in  the  theocratic, 
aristocratic  politics  of  the  time.  Harvard  and 
Yale,  the  pioneers  of  learning  in  New  England, 
were  in  the  beginning  a  sort  of  cross  between 
a  theological  seminary  and  a  training-school  for 
the  sons  of  the  colonial  gentry.  Down  to  1772 
in  Harvard,  and  to  1763  in  Yale,  students'  names 
appeared  in  the  annual  catalogues  of  these  insti- 

207 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

tutlons,  not  in  alphabetical  order,  but  according 
to  the  rank  of  their  parents  in  colonial  society. 
First  came  sons  of  the  governors  of  the  colony; 
then  of  the  ministers  of  the  Gospel ;  then  of  civil 
and  military  authorities;  then  of  lawyers  and 
physicians;  then  of  merchants  in  large  trade, 
that  is,  sea-going  merchants;  then  of  freeholders 
or  farmers;  then  of  workers  in  towns.  It  was 
part  of  the  business  of  the  colleges  to  produce 
that  combination  of  cultivated  manner  and 
manly  accomplishment  which  made  up  the  ideal 
of  the  English  gentleman.  Moreover,  nearly  all 
the  undergraduates  of  the  colonial  colleges  were 
not  merely  destined  for  professional  careers,  but 
came,  either  from  the  professional  stratum  of  the 
community  or  from  homes  where  the  learned 
professions  were  revered  and  exalted  in  the  eyes 
of  the  children.  Hence,  partly  because  of  the 
class  in  the  community  from  which  the  under- 
graduate body  was  drawn,  and  partly  because  of 
the  sincere  and  simple  taste  in  both  inward  and 
outward  matters  which  marked  these  frontier 
settlements,  the  colleges  in  the  early  days 
represented  quite  as  much  sesthetic  as  ethical 
idealism. 

Now,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  they 
have  suffered  since  those  days  a  sad  change,  and 
this  is  due  to  a  variety  of  causes.     The  German 

208 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

ideal  of  an  exact  knowledge,  as  contrasted  with  a 
more  general  cultivation,  operated  early  in  the 
last  century  to  modify  the  English  influence,  em- 
phasizing in  the  literary  and  classic  flavor  of  the 
college,  the  severer  note  of  erudition  and  inten- 
sifying the  discipline.  This  was  a  distinct  con- 
tribution to  American  education,  bringing  in  new 
elements  of  strength  and  intellectual  vigor;  but 
it  added  nothing  to  that  cultivation  of  the 
imagination  and  correcting  of  the  aesthetic  ideals 
which  was  also  a  part  of  a  college's  duty  in  a  new 
and  heterogeneous  community  like  ours.  The 
rise  first  of  the  natural,  then  of  the  humanistic, 
sciences,  in  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  greatly  enlarged  the  curriculum,  and, 
in  the  absorption  of  time  and  attention  formerly 
given  to  the  classics,  largely  modified  the  feelings 
and  the  taste,  as  well  as  the  schedule,  of  the 
undergraduate.  Scientific  pursuits,  from  the 
nature  of  the  material  with  which  they  deal  and 
of  the  methods  which  they  employ,  cannot 
produce  as  fine  and  discriminating  appreciations 
of  beauty,  on  the  part  of  the  student,  as  the 
translating  and  composing  of  prose  and  verse 
literature.  The  passion  for  the  practical  in 
American  life  has  encouraged  an  attitude  of  half- 
contemptuous  condescension  toward  all  forms 
and  expression  of  the  ideal  which  are  produced 

209 


THE  COLLEGE  COLUSE 

for  no  ulterior  end  than  their  own  loveliness. 
And  so  it  has  come  about  that  we  distrust  culture 
and  spell  it,  derisively,  with  a  captial  "C."  We 
quote,  with  complacent  approbation,  the  late 
Mr.  Godkin's  satirical  remark,  that  a  university 
of  the  English  type  is  the  ideal  place  for  those 
people  who  are  chiefly  interested  in  lawn-tennis, 
gardening,  and  true  religion.  We  feel  that 
sentiment  is  womanish;  that  the  expending  of 
money  on  the  creating  and  perpetuating  of  the 
vision  of  beauty  is  to  be  suspected;  and  that  the 
practical,  the  accurate,  the  didactic,  and  demon- 
strable should  represent  the  aims  of  the  college 
course. 

But  most  of  all  have  the  American  colleges 
changed  because  the  American  people  have  so 
changed.  There  has  been  an  enormous  and  rapid 
increase  in  the  wealth  of  the  country,  brought 
about,  not  by  the  exercise  of  extraordinary  in- 
dustry or  financial  genius  on  our  part,  but  by  the 
unhappy  accident  which  has  enabled  us  ruth- 
lessly to  exploit  the  natural  resources  of  a  virgin 
continent.  Up  to  the  time  of  the  Civil  War  we 
were  an  isolated  nation,  largely  agricultural,  cut 
off  by  the  Atlantic  Ocean  from  that  ancient 
society  and  its  painfully  achieved  standards, 
whose  early  remembrance  had  begun  to  fade 
from  the  minds  of  the  descendants  of  the  colonial 

210 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

settlers.    Hence  with  money,  and  no  background, 
with  that  passionate  desire  for  self-expression  in- 
separable from  a  young  and  growing  nation,  but 
no  standards  to  direct  and  restrain  it,  America 
blossomed  out  about  1876  into  a  tropical  luxuri- 
ance of  aesthetic  horrors.     Our  domestic  dwellings 
were  Queen  Anne  in  front,  but  far  from  regal 
in  the  rear.     It  was  hard  to  say,  concerning  the 
palaces   of   our   millionaires,    whether   they   in- 
clined,   in    their    opulent   magnificence,    to   the 
standards  of  early  Pullman  or  late  North  German 
Lloyd.     Ostentatious  extravagance,  bizarre  and 
grotesque  decorative  expressions,  were  the  order 
of  the  day.     We  painted  snow-shovels  with  old 
oaken  buckets  and  set  them  up  in  the  fireplace. 
We  tied  up  the  legs  of  milking-stools  with  baby- 
blue  satin  ribbons;    sketched  midwinter  land- 
scapes upon  them,  and  deposited  them  in  the 
drawing-room,  near  to  the  Rogers  plaster  group 
of  the  farmers  playing  checkers  on  a  barrel-head, 
or  under  the  black  walnut  what-not,  covered  with 
who  knows  what  in  the  way  of  "objects  of  bigo- 
try and  virtue."     And  then  came  the  influx  of 
enormous  alien  populations,  with  their  peasant 
traditions,  their  barren  and  impoverished  lives. 
They,  too,  sharing  in  the  material  prosperity  and 
social  opportunities  of  the  new  country,  naturally 
set  about  finding  ways  to  express  their  ideas  of 

211 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

the  opulent,  the  gorgeous,  and  the  grandiose.  So 
that  America  became,  and,  to  a  lessening  degree, 
still  is,  a  vast  experiment  station  in  naive  and  un- 
conventional aesthetic  expression.  Nor  is  it,  I 
think,  too  much  to  say  that  the  average  American 
taste  to-day,  while  it  has  markedly  and  rapidly 
improved  in  the  last  two  decades,  represents,  for 
the  most  part,  a  recrudescence  of  barbarian  de- 
lights and  vanities.  Take,  for  instance,  our  larg- 
est metropolis.  New  York  City.  It  is  not  merely 
the  wharf  of  the  nation,  it  is  also  its  chief  com- 
munal expression.  It  is  the  place  to  which 
Americans  go  from  all  over  the  continent  to 
spend  their  money;  to  which  we  naturally  gravi- 
tate in  our  hours  of  relaxation,  those  moments  of 
freedom  from  economic  pressure,  when  we  no 
longer  do  what  we  have  to  do  in  order  to  earn 
our  bread  and  butter,  but  what  we  would  like  to 
do  for  our  own  personal  satisfaction.  New  York 
is,  therefore,  the  great  amusement  center  of  the 
continent.  And  in  no  way  do  men  more  clearly 
reveal  their  essential  aesthetic  and  ethical  charac- 
teristics than  in  the  types  of  pleasures  and 
amusements  which  they  choose  for  their  hours  of 
recreation.  Hence  the  picture  of  the  American 
public,  as  it  amuses  itself  in  New  York,  is  no  un- 
fair exhibition  of  its  average  aesthetic  standards. 
That  picture  focuses  in  one  of  the  most  fascinat- 

212 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

ing  and  most  terrible  sights  to  be  seen  anywhere 
in  themodern  world,  Broadway  at  the  height  of 
the  season  on  a  winter's  night.  There  is,  indeed, 
a  lighted  way,  brighter  than  under  the  sun  at 
noonday,  its  glittering  electric  signs  making  every 
appeal  that  the  hawker's  genius  can  suggest  to 
human  cupidity,  vanity,  and  lust.  There  are  the 
great  trams  endlessly  crashing  up  and  down  the 
center  of  the  street,  filled  to  the  lowest  step  of 
their  platforms  with  restless,  chattering,  volatile 
human  beings.  On  both  sides  of  that  lighted  way 
are  the  open  doors  of  the  houses  of  eating  and 
drinking;  houses  of  amusement  and  shame; 
houses  where  strange  and  terrible  pleasures, 
sweet  and  secret,  and  devastating  vices,  find  their 
nightly  patrons.  In  and  out  of  those  open 
doors,  hour  after  hour,  flows  the  pleasure-seeking 
crowd  like  the  tides  of  an  unwholesome  sea. 
And  over  all  the  dust  and  mist  and  turmoil, 
rising  up  out  of  the  scents  and  perfumes  of  that 
terrible  assembly,  is  the  characteristic  cry  of  our 
age:  to  have,  to  hold,  to  buy;  to  eat,  t^  drink, 
to  feel;  to  get,  to  sell,  to  exploit  the  world  for 
power;  to  exploit  one's  self  for  pleasure  —  this 
is  to  live.  The  same  hard  and  ruthless  look,  the 
wide-open,  iron  gaze  of  the  man  who  know^s  all 
and  has  done  all,  has  left  untried  no  horrid 
experiment  from  which  he  might  derive  a  new 
^13 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

sensation,  —  that  look  which  Bronzino  painted 
into  the  faces  of  his  Florentines  in  the  days  of  the 
Medici,  —  that  sinister  and  unsensitive  look  is 
in  the  eyes  of  many  an  American  to-day. 

Now,  all  this  has  profoundly  modified  the 
college.  It  has  both  popularized  and  vulgarized 
it.  Everybody's  son  attends  it  to-day,  and 
everybody's  standard  prevails  in  it,  for  the  under- 
graduate body  will  never  be  very  much  better  or 
very  much  worse  than  the  homes  out  of  which  it 
issues.  There  is  nothing,  therefore,  surprising 
in  the  fact  that,  coming  from  a  civilization  so 
opulent  and  so  barbaric,  so  extreme  and  artificial 
in  its  forms  of  amusement,  and  geared  to  such 
high  nervous  tension,  the  youth  who  enter  the 
college  should  represent  a  low  level  of  aesthetic 
development.  That  they  do  represent  this  low 
level  is,  I  think,  only  too  apparent.  Certain  of 
their  widespread  habits  bear  witness  to  it,  habits 
which,  entirely  aside  from  the  moral  obliquity 
which  sometimes  attaches  to  them,  yet  make  one 
cringe  to  speak  of.  One  is  under-graduate  pro- 
fanity, which  is  even  more  a  sign  of  vulgarity 
than  it  is  of  illiteracy.  Ancient  words  of  vice, 
handed  down  by  word  of  mouth  from  genera- 
tion to  generation,  age-old  defamations  of  the 
Almighty,  are  inexpressibly  detestable  when  they 
issue  from  the  mouths  of  youths.      That   the 

214 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

grosser  forms  of  immorality  are  decidedly  lessen- 
ing among  undergraduates  is  the  almost  universal 
testimony  of  those  who  are  competent  to  speak 
on  the  subject.  But  some  of  the  worst  language 
I  have  ever  listened  to,  —  the  most  profane,  the 
most  callously  licentious,  —  I  have  heard  from 
striplings  in  American  colleges.  Undergraduate 
profanity  deserves  very  serious  attention  from  us 
all,  not  merely  because  of  the  irreverence  which 
it  indicates,  but  because  of  the  absence  of  im- 
agination and  sensitiveness  which  it  reveals. 
Strange  to  say,  it  does  not  always  so  much  indi- 
cate the  speaker's  spiritual  debasement,  his  reli- 
gious incapacity,  as  it  does  the  absence  in  him 
of  personal  refinement,  decent  standards,  aesthetic 
self-respect.  Another  witness  to  this  personal 
declension  is  the  quite  modern  habit  of  chewing 
gum,  the  truly  frightful  spectacle  one  may  see  of 
whole  platoons  of  youth  watching  a  ball  game 
from  the  bleachers,  and  working  their  jaws  in 
unison  in  a  sort  of  rotary  motion,  chewing  like 
so  many  cattle  the  social  cud,  utterly  obHvious 
to  the  depth  of  personal  commonness  to  which 
the  indulgence  sinks  them.  Another  is  the  lack 
of  interest  on  the  part  of  most  undergraduates 
in  good  music.  Their  devotion  is  to  trivial 
tunes,  written  in  syncopated  measures,  known 
as  "ragtime."     One  remembers  here  the  cheap 

215 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

musical  show  which  has  long  been  considered 
the  chief  jpiece  de  resistance  for  the  undergraduate 
in  his  lighter  moments,  a  show  which  has  neither 
wit  nor  meaning  nor  melody,  nor  anything  but 
its  direct  appeal  to  the  most  elemental  of  all 
the  senses  to  commend  it.  I  think  few  things 
more  clearly  indicate  the  contempt  which  age 
sometimes  has  for  youth,  than  the  class  of  amuse- 
ments which  it  offers  them,  which  it  is  quite 
confident  they  will  gladly  accept,  and  which, 
alas,  they  invariably  do  accept. 
[  Again,  the  kinds  of  interior  decoration  which 
are  devised  to  lure  from  your  pockets  the  restless 
pennies  indicate  the  low  level  of  taste  to  which 
you  have  fallen.  We  adorn  our  rooms  with 
flannel  banners.  We  affect  two  sorts  of  pictures 
—  the  audaciously  sentimental  and  the  sporting 
virile.  The  sentimental  variety  is  illustrated  in 
the  well-known  print  of  a  lithe  and  lissom  young 
woman  in  full,  very  full,  evening-dress,  —  what 
might  be  called  a  noticeable  evening-dress,  — 
swooning  in  the  arms  of  a  tall  and  slender  youth, 
rather  consciously  superior  in  pumps  and  claw- 
hammer coat,  who  imprints  an  impassioned 
salute  upon  the  lady's  too-willing  lips.  The 
manly  variety  is  illustrated  in  those  Renwick 
posters,  printed  in  primary  colors,  which  one  sees 
displayed    in    every    college    bookstore.     They 

216 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

represent  the  Freshman  of  a  vacuous  counte- 
nance, blowing  smoke-rings  Hke  a  naughty  Httle 
devil;  the  Sophomore,  with  his  little  cap  awry, 
and  his  exaggerated  pup;  the  "fusser,"  learning 
his  'Arry  and  'Arriette  art  by  practicing  on  the 
dressmaker's  dummy;  the  Senior,  lighting  a 
black  cigar  with  his  flaming  diploma.  All  these 
travesties  of  life  and  nature,  indescribably  worth- 
less, but  quite  popular,  indicate  into  what  valleys 
of  humiliation  we  have  descended.  Again,  the 
lack  of  any  independent  critical  judgment  on 
your  part  in  literature,  your  innocent  inability 
to  recognize  excellence  except  when  it  is  under- 
scored and  labeled  for  your  benefit,  also  indicate 
the  same  deficiencies. 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  many  and  the  brilliant 
exceptions  to  all  this  which  every  undergraduate 
community  offers;  of  the  large  number  of  young 
men  who  are  quick  to  appreciate  and  keen  to 
analyze  both  the  beautiful  and  the  good  in  the 
life  about  them.  Yet  I  think  it  may  fairly  be 
said  that  the  average  undergraduate  is  rather  an 
obtuse  and  unawakened  creature,  only  seeing  the 
things  in  the  world  that  he  expects  to  see,  usually 
unable,  in  any  given  experience,  to  distinguish 
its  salient  and  characteristic  excellencies  or  to 
perceive  its  particular  defects,  possessed  of  no 
clear  or  adequate  literary  and  artistic  standards. 

217 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

There  is,  therefore,  a  very  real  reason  for  devoting 
these  pages  to  the  discussion  of  your  aesthetic 
problem.  And  it  is  a  part  of  your  unsophisti- 
cation,  your  barbarism,  that  the  very  word  "aes- 
thetic" is  repellent  in  your  ears.  It  connotes  to 
you  "pink  teas,"  and  an  attempted  transatlantic 
accent,  and  a  general  emasculation  of  life.  We 
confound  the  lovers  of  the  beautiful  with  those 
men  in  whom  the  appreciation  of  beauty  has  not 
been  balanced  or  made  vigorous  by  a  combina- 
tion with  more  sturdy  but  no  more  normal 
attributes.  We  think  of  the  dilettante,  who  is 
the  elegant  idler  in  the  community,  an  amateur 
who  exploits  art,  but  has  no  thorough  knowledge 
of  it  or  any  creative  ability.  Or  we  think  of  the 
sentimentalist,  who  has  a  superficial  and  emo- 
tional appreciation  of  beauty,  without  insight 
into  its  moral  aspects,  and  with  neither  depth 
nor  continuity  of  feeling  in  his  rapidly  shifting 
allegiances.  Or  we  think  of  the  sensationalist, 
who  loves  beauty  because  of  the  physical  or 
sensual  delights  to  which  it  may  be  made  to 
minister,  and  whom  we  regard  with  abhorrence 
and  contempt.  Therefore,  when  we  meet  a  man 
of  cultivated  manner,  delicate  and  sensitive 
feeling,  wide  and  gracious  interests,  we  are  apt 
to  put  upon  him  the  burden  of  proof  of  showing 
that  all  this  development  of  his  aesthetic  nature 

218 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

has  not  emasculated  his  person  or  degraded  his 
spirit. 

The  first  thing  we  must  do,  then,  is  to  try  to 
understand  just  what  sort  of  a  man  the  true 
aesthete  is.  I  think  of  him  as  one  who  has  a 
quick  and  eager  appreciation  of  the  creative 
spirit,  and  especially  of  those  expressions  of  that 
spirit  which  sum  up  the  sense  of  goodness  and 
of  beauty  in  the  world,  which  record  the  finest 
emotion,  the  keenest  hungers,  the  most  imagi- 
native conceptions  of  human  life.  These  things 
interest  him  quite  as  much,  indeed  more,  than 
abstract  philosophies,  or  discoveries  in  natural 
science,  or  the  ingenious  application  of  such  dis- 
coveries to  practical  purposes.  This  man  is  an 
idealist.  His  face  is  turned  towards  the  future, 
where  all  our  faces  should  be  turned,  yet  he  has  a 
keen  and  loving  perception  that  all  our  future 
must  grow  out  of  the  past,  that,  as  some  one 
has  recently  said:  "You  cannot  think  of  it  as 
uncoupled  from  the  rest  of  time  and  allowed  to 
run  wild."  Hence  he  prizes  all  ancient  memo- 
rials of  thought  and  effort  as  sincere  and  touch- 
ing expressions  of  the  growing  human  spirit.  He 
is  moved  by  the  tone  and  consecration  which 
age  imparts.  The  phiHstine  is  scornful  of  the 
treasures  which  we  have  inherited.  They  appear 
to    him    out-moded,    inconvenient,    ridiculous, 

219 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

faded,  having  little  real  or  monetary  value. 
The  cultivated  man  perceives  that  every  inheri- 
tance of  truth  or  beauty,  coming  out  of  the  past, 
is  the  proved  material  from  which  is  to  be  de- 
veloped the  future.  It  is  the  prepared  ground 
for  the  garden  of  beauty  that  is  to  be.  For  all 
such  inheritances  furnish  standards,  indicate 
methods,  transmit  at  least  the  beginnings  of 
sane  and  lovely  visions.  Hence  they  dispel 
ignorance,  temper  extravagant  enthusiasm,  sub- 
due crude  originality,  help  us  to  see  life  clearly 
and  to  see  it  whole.  In  the  "Grammar  of  As- 
sent," Ne\\Tnan  has  a  very  beautiful  passage,  in 
which  he  refers  to  this  interpretative,  illuminat- 
ing office  of  ancient  beauty  for  the  present  day. 
"How  often,"  he  says,  "we  read  as  schoolboys 
some  great  line  of  classic  verse,  or  famous  bit 
of  prose,  the  product,  perhaps,  of  an  Ionian 
festival,  or  a  morning  upon  the  Sabine  Hills, 
and  it  seemed  to  us  mere  rhetorical  common- 
place. We  could  not  understand  why  it  had 
lived  from  generation  to  generation.  But  then, 
when  long  years  have  passed,  and  we  have  had 
experience  of  life,  we  re-read  the  ancient  couplet 
or  the  hackneyed  paragraph,  and  they  startle 
us  with  their  sad  penetration,  their  vivid  exact- 
ness." Through  all  the  varied  channels,  then,  of 
literature,  ethics,  religion,  and  all  the  arts,  the 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

noblest  expressions  of  the  human  spirit  have 
come  down  to  us  from  the  days  that  are  no  more. 
And  on  these  expressions  the  sensitive  and  re- 
flective man  loves  to  ponder,  and  in  them  all  he 
takes  a  sincere  and  innocent  delight.  Now,  to 
do  this  is  the  very  thing  which  the  undergraduate 
needs,  because  so  few  of  you  are  reflective  beings. 
You  accept  life,  but  you  don't  scrutinize  it;  you 
take  what  each  day  brings,  but  with  no  intelli- 
gent valuation.  You  have  few  conscious  appre- 
ciations, because  you  know  little  of  the  world's 
proved  and  tested  best.  You  do  not  hold 
yourselves  up  against  the  great  achievements 
of  the  past,  letting  the  eye  sink  inward  and  the 
heart  lie  plain  in  the  light  of  their  beauty. 
Hence  the  thing  that  you  know  least  about  in 
your  undergraduate  days  is  your  own  selves. 

For  the  dwelling  upon  the  lovely  and  gracious 
and  beautiful  expressions  of  our  human  lif e — 
the  bringing  yourself  up  to  them  —  is  like  coming 
up  to  a  touchstone,  these  things  reveal  you  to 
yourself.  They  expose  your  deficiencies.  They 
awaken  your  possibilities.  Any  supreme  work 
of  art  is  a  mirror  in  which  you  view  your  own 
spiritual  lineaments.  Acquaintance  with  old, 
unhappy,  far-off  things,  with  the  heroes  ^-ho 
went  down  scornful  before  many  spears,  with 
the  music  which  records,  in  the  sweetness  of  its 

221 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

strain,  the  anguish  of  Hving,  these  arouse  your 
own  heroism,  your  own  sensitive  and  perceptive 
spirit.  To  know  and  ponder  how  men  have 
toiled;  what  men  have  suffered;  to  see  the 
dreams  of  the  race  incarnated  in  bronze,  spread 
out  on  canvas,  made  articulate  in  prose  and 
verse,  rising  in  dim  and  intricate  richness  of 
stone,  in  some  Gothic  chapel  —  all  this  means, 
not  emasculation,  not  sentimentality,  but  growth 
in  sensitiveness,  in  personal  fastidiousness,  in 
breadth  and  intelligence  of  spirit,  in  vigor  and 
elevation  of  soul. 

Here,  for  instance,  in  the  Plaza  at  Fifty-ninth 
Street,  is  Saint-Gaudens's  group  of  gilded  bronze, 
Sherman  astride  his  stallion,  proud,  confident, 
determined,  Victory,  impetuous  in  triumph, 
sweeping  on  before.  The  cultivated  man  stops 
to  fix  his  eyes  in  sheer  delight  upon  those  metal 
forms.  He  is  not  a  poseur  or  an  emotionalist. 
But  there  he  sees  the  spirit  of  majesty  and  honor 
and  courage  and  pride  made  clear  and  evident 
to  him.  It  feeds  his  hungry  heart  on  the  gods' 
food,  and  he  goes  on  his  way  illumined  and 
refreshed.  Or  one  enters  one  day  the  Palace 
of  the  Louvre,  and  passing  through  the  gorgeous 
gallery  of  Apollo,  comes  into  the  salon  carrL 
A  small  canvas  hangs,  to  his  left,  upon  the  wall  — 
the  portrait  of  a  young  man  holding  a  glove. 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

The  simple  dignity,  the  unconscious  modesty  of 
youth,  is  there.  The  clear  and  candid  gaze,  the 
quiet,  sober  mouth,  the  whole  figure  —  all  is 
instinct  with  the  noble  frankness  of  a  princely 
boy.  One  looks  upon  that  portrait,  and  tears 
rise  in  the  heart.  Ideals  and  dreams  which  we 
had  thought  gone  from  us  forever  lift  again  on 
the  far  horizon  of  the  mind,  remote,  but  clear, 
like  distant  towers  in  a  sunset  sky.  The  old 
hungers  for  the  simple,  the  chivalrous,  and  the 
true  awake,  and  behold,  our  youth  has  been 
returned  and  we  breathe  the  air  of  heaven  again. 
Thus  our  love  of  beauty  has  refreshed  the  inner 
man.  Or  on  some  lonely  day  it  is  borne  in  upon 
us  all  over  again  that  life  has,  oh,  quite  as  much 
sorrow  as  pleasure,  and  that  our  very  joys  are 
three  parts  pain.  We  feel  the  slings  and  arrows 
of  outrageous  fortune;  we  are  tired  of  forever 
expecting  but  never  receiving.  And  so  we  long 
for  the  blessed  human  touch,  and  crave  to  enter 
deep  into  the  heart  of  our  strange  world.  And 
then  one  turns  to  the  great  Elizabethan.  He 
listens  to  lago  and  Othello  in  their  sinister  con- 
ference, or  hears  the  whisperings  of  Juliet  as  she 
leans  over  the  balcony  of  her  father's  house. 
But  does  one  just  read  cold  words,  dialogues 
cunningly  constructed  and  built  up.^  Oh,  no! 
one  does  not  read  at  all,  but  listens  to  men  and 

223 


THE  COLLEGE  COLTISE 

women  pouring  out  the  glowing,  full-throated 
utterance  of  their  passion  with  unpremeditated 
art.  Horror-stricken  we  see  the  chamber  at 
Cyprus.  Softly,  we  too,  walk  in  the  orchard  at 
Verona;  and  in  this  mystic  touch  with  the  un- 
changing heart  of  our  race  our  lives  are  comforted 
and  composed. 
/  Thus,  then,  we  gild  the  prosaic  present  with 
the  grace  and  poetry  of  the  past.  And  we  do  far 
more  than  that.  Thus  we  renew  our  own  capac- 
ity for  vision,  and  are  better  able,  in  our  day 
and  generation,  to  play  our  part  and  serve 
joyously  and  courageously  our  time.  Thus  our 
personalities  are  enriched  and  deepened.  There 
^  is  "more"  of  us,  and  the  more  becomes  better 
and  better.  We  increase  our  points  of  contact 
with  the  world;  we  are  able,  through  these 
sympathies,  these  appreciations,  to  enter  into 
and  understand  larger  and  larger  areas  of  human 
aspiration  and  experience.  More  life  interests 
us,  and  a  versatility  of  interests  besets  us  as  we 
grow  older,  and  the  whole  of  our  natures  is 
developed  under  this  fine  universality  of  appeal. 
So  that,  as  we  return  to  our  several  communities, 
we  carry  back  new  sources  of  inspiration,  new 
insights  into  the  human  spirit,  new,  chastened, 
significant  waj^s  of  expressing  our  own  genius,  to 
enrich  and  illumine  the  life  to  which  we  come. 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

So  this  is  my  final  plea  as  we  close  these  talks 
together.  Our  American  life  is  restless,  filled 
with  many  trivial  and  detached  activities,  arid 
and  monotonous  in  expression,  with  compara- 
tively few  interests  and  not  many  subtle  or 
precious  joys.  But  chance  has  given  to  you, 
its  sons,  four  years,  set  apart  from  the  roaring 
and  the  turbulent  stream  of  the  world,  which 
may  be  years  of  quietness  and  beauty,  devoted 
to  the  deepening  and  enriching  of  life,  to  the  dis- 
covery of  those  values  in  it  which  fate  can  neither 
give  nor  take  away.  There  is  no  taint  in  the 
joy  that  such  a  quest  will  bring.  It  is  admirable 
and  necessary  to  have  vigor,  initiative,  courage, 
self-reliance.  I  know  how  you  all  worship 
virility,  and  that  for  which  the  word  appears 
to  stand.  It  is  also  admirable,  and  no  less 
manly,  to  have  delicacy  of  temper,  vividness  and 
quickness  of  delight,  in  the  presence  of  perfect 
objects.  It  is  a  good  practice  for  American 
youth  to  ponder  on  human  life,  to  search  for  its 
hidden  secret  in  those  expressions  of  it  which 
come  from  the  heart  of  the  poet,  the  painter,  the 
sculptor,  the  maker  of  churches,  the  builder  of 
stately  palaces.  It  is  a  good  thing  for  us  to 
unite  ourselves,  by  reading  and  contemplation, 
with  these  creative  and  perceptive  souls,  so 
that  our  own  insights  are  developed  from  theirs. 

225 


THE  COLLEGE  COURSE 

Thus  we,  too,  become  responsive  to  the  mood  of 
a  building,  to  the  delicious  play  and  interplay  of 
tone  upon  a  canvas,  to  the  lights  and  shadows 
of  a  group,  to  the  modeling  of  some  sculptured 
face;  so  we,  too,  feel  the  inward  atmosphere  of 
each  individual  who  comes  within  our  notice, 
and  know  the  fingers  of  his  spirit  when  they 
reach  out  to  ours;  so  we,  too,  live  in  a  bright 
and  ideal  w^orld,  whose  kingdoms  of  the  spirit, 
which  the  imagination  has  conquered  for  itself, 
become,  as  Hawthorne  said,  "a  thousandfold 
more  real  to  us  than  the  earth  whereon  we  stamp 
our  feet!"  All  this  means  a  complex  and  highly 
developed  personality.  Yet  are  we  not  sent  to 
college,  that  of  us  just  such  developed  and 
educed  persons  may  be  made?  All  this  means 
a  development  of  the  feminine  powers  in  men. 
But  all  great  men  have  something  of  that  intui- 
tive insight,  that  sensitiveness  to  the  psychologi- 
cal climate,  and  that  power  to  respond  wholly 
to  a  great  ideal,  which  is  what  we  mean  by 
feminine  attributes.  And  even  as  you  should 
loathe  and  hate  effeminacy,  so  should  you  revere 
and  cultivate  these  fine  and  subtle  and  truly 
precious  things. 

And  then,  as  life  goes  on,  it  will,  indeed,  take 
much  away.  Old  loves  will  die,  old  enthusiasms 
chill,  old  interests  fade.     The  body  will  thicken 

226 


THE  DISTASTE  FOR  THE  BEAUTIFUL 

and  coarsen,  and  age,  like  a  wintry  shadow, 
creep  over  your  face.  The  world  will  pass  ever 
swifter  and  swifter  before  your  eyes;  more  and 
more  it  will  seem  like  the  vague  and  insubstantial 
pageant  of  a  dream.  But  the  sense  of  its  mystic 
and  imperishable  beauty  will  deepen.  Sorrow 
only  clarifies  that  sense,  pain  and  effort  form 
the  somber  background  against  which  it  shines 
more  clear.  Then  with  every  succeeding  year 
you  will  surmount  life,  not  be  broken  by  it, 
because  you  will  not  lose  your  power  to  respond, 
to  leap  up  and  answer  to  it,  to  be  so  moved  and 
enthralled  by  it.  Every  year  it  will  interest  you 
more,  and  you  shall  be  more  within  it,  less  out- 
side of  it,  feeling  yourself  a  part  of  its  solemn  and 
majestic  grace.  So  that  at  the  end  you  wuU  be 
able  to  say: 

"I  love  the  brooks  that  down  their  channels  fret 
Even  more  than  when  I  tripped  lightly  as  they. 
The  innocent  brightness  of  a  newborn  day  is  lovely  yet; 
The  clouds  that  gather  round  the  setting  sun 
To  take  a  sober  coloring  from  an  eye 
That  hath  kept  watch  o'er  man's  mortality: 
Another  race  hath  been  and  other  palms  are  won: 
Thanks  to  the  human  heart  by  which  we  live. 
Thanks  to  its  tenderness,  its  joys  and  fears. 
To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears." 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .   S    .   A 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed. 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


NUV  2<3  1947 

u^H' 

'^CC'D  LD 

DEC  26  19« 

W^ 

JUL  1 8  l^b/ 

-../i^'''^ 

SEP  1  1  1954 

2)Nw'60lHq 

'SEP?"  1954  Lll 

•iliC  ■■. 

6Nov'61JM 

NOV  12  1^-0 

3,F[jf-"^?F^ 

^ul'57WlVI 

LD  21-100m-9,'47(A5702sl6)476 


YB 


P^ 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


